29 Seconds by T.M. Logan

Hello everyone.

Hope you are all well.  Did you get hit with hurricane Dorian? Did you see the Bahamas? How terrible. I find a category one hurricane terrifying, I cannot imagine what those people went through. Sadly, we did have damage. I know you are aware we have a historic house, but someone slapped aluminum siding on it in the 1970's and we are not taking it off.  First, the siding actually provides warmth which is especially useful in an area where old houses were built with no insulation, and secondly, we'd have to get permission from the historic planning committee to change the outside. We really don't need anymore hoops to jump through. I am already feeling like a cross between a circus pony and the old high-diving horses from Atlantic City (which my parents made me go see when I was really little). During the storm we lost a good hunk of siding, actually the back and side of our house, not the whole thing but the soffit. For those of you that don't speak "house", that is the part way at the tippy top that touches the roof. We have three stories over a high basement so the soffit is more than thirty feet high, we will need a contractor to tack it back up. Naturally they are all swamped. Estimate number one is supposed to arrive this afternoon, hard to really seriously gripe about when so many people have lost their lives. Enough of that, on to something much more pleasant, a new book.

I recently read 29 Seconds by T.M. Logan. If he sounds familiar it is because he wrote the book Lies, a thriller, which I liked very much. 29 Seconds is the story of a woman, Sarah, who has the boss from hell. Sarah is a teacher at the college level, she is trying to get the British version of tenure. Her boss, Alan, denies her repeatedly, making it very clear her career is not advancing and he will ensure it is completely over unless she sleeps with him whenever he desires. Sarah is a married woman with children who finds her boss disgusting. After an unusual situation our heroine teacher meets a man with ties to the Russian underworld. He insists he owes her a favor and wants to provide his specialty...making people disappear. All she has to do is give him a name.

You, obviously, know where this story is headed, the main character is going to wrestle with her morals about the possibility of giving her boss's name to this criminal. She resists even after Alan  gets more offensive with every chapter. Frankly, I would have smacked him across the face long ago and would have given his name to the Russian mobster without reservation, morals smorals  Heck the boss is so bad I probably would have purchased a megaphone to yell his name for the vanishing treatment, not the cheapo old fashioned cones either, the electronic annoyingly loud megaphones. Yes, I know I've just defined myself as a morally bankrupt, not nice, perhaps even murderous person. Read it, see what you'd do.

I am greatly simplifying the story, it is much more interesting that this simple plot and has many twists and turns. It is well written, grabs your attention from the beginning and moves quickly to a satisfying end. Two well paced, interesting thrillers now from this author, I am anxious for his next novel.

Do you think I should mention that whole morally inept, possibly murderous, thriller reader to any contractors coming to fix our house. Wonder if they would work faster or run.