The Killer Trail

March 24, 2014
When professional killer Ray Owens loses his cell phone, which contains incriminating information, and Vancouver psychiatric worker Chris Ryder finds it, the solution seems straightforward: ambush and kill Ryder. Ryder soon discovers he is the target of a ruthless killer with whom he shares a longer history than he first realized, and, worse, Owens’s powerful employer is determined to get his hands on the phone before the police do. With not just his own life but also those of his loved ones on the line, Ryder will have to confront his family’s darkest secrets to survive. Carew demonstrates a broad awareness of crime fiction conventions in this, his debut novel, but unfortunately fails to move beyond cliché. Inexplicably, the author combines melodrama with self-sabotaging villains, resulting in a novel in which the antagonists’ essential incompetence leaves them impotent as credible threats. The surprising revelations fail to surprise, the various ploys to engage the reader’s sympathies are heavy-handed, and the plot proves a sequence of anticlimaxes.