Wounds by Alton Gansky

This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing Wounds B&H Books (May 1, 2013) by Alton Gansky

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Alton L. Gansky is the author of 24 novels and 8 nonfiction works, as well as principle writer of 9 novels and 2 nonfiction books. He has been a Christie Award finalist (A Ship Possessed) and an Angel Award winner (Terminal Justice) and recently was award the ACFW award for best suspense/thriller for his work on Fallen Angel. He holds a BA and MA in biblical studies and Lit.D. He lives in central California with his wife. In addition to his own writing, Alton Gansky has consulted and provided editing/ writing services to several CBA publishers and written copy, video scripts, and other works for the general business market. Through Gansky.Communications he has consulted with publishers and agents, as well as provided editing services. He is “the go to guy” for co-writing having been selected by Penguin, Waterbrook, Broadman Holman, and other publishers to work with their top tier authors. Gansky is in frequent demand at writer’s conferences having taught and keynoted in California, Arizona, New Mexico, North Carolina, Delaware, Washington, and Canada. He has also been guest lecturer on suspense writing at Taylor University in Indiana.


ABOUT THE BOOK

A man’s lifeless body is found in the fresh soil of San Diego’s botanical garden. Cause of death is asphyxiation, an easy call for the medical examiner. More mysterious, however, are the tiny drops of blood on the victim’s skin, resulting from hundreds of punctures. A rabbi leaving his house for work expects a regular day at the synagogue. That quickly changes when he discovers a dead man on his front lawn, clearly beaten to death. Motorcycle riders racing along the empty streets of an abandoned military base stumble across another man’s corpse, its skin revealing long, red-purple marks of a thrashing given with wood dowels. The numbers mount. Each week another victim and another mysterious clue in a game of mass murder the police don’t want to lose. The solution rests with Dr. Ellis Poe, a religious professor who only wishes to be left alone with his books and classes. But evil must be faced, and the choice is no longer his own.

If you would like to read the first chapter of Wounds, go HERE.

My review:
     I have read several of Alton Gansky's books, but this one has to be his best ever. It had a teriffic plot. Even when it became obvious where the plot was going, it only became more suspenseful. I liked the characters, epecially the two main ones who though so totally different in every way, were connected by their past.

  This is a gritty novel. If you're wanting to read a cozy little mystery, this book is not for you. In fact, other than the killings, which I won't give spoilers away, and one of the characters, there isn't much Christian about the book. There is still a Christian world view, and the book is clean from bad language. There is a lot of violence, but it isn't overdone or too graphic, in my opinion. Good does triumph over evil in the end, and though the issue of forgiveness on someone's part was left up in the air, I enjoyed the ending of the book as much as the rest of it. I had been looking forward to reading this book, and I was not disappointed. Gansky outdid himself on this book, and I would put this book up against any of the secular best seller books in the thriller/suspense genre'. It is awesome.