The Dark Time is the ninth in Nick Petrie’s action thriller series featuring Peter Ash, a US Marine veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It’s the fifth in the series I’ve read, and it has the familiar cast of characters including loyal partner June Cassidy and Ash’s friend, the multitalented tech master and former criminal Lewis.
Petrie has a particular talent in crafting powerful opening scenes for his novels that irresistibly draw you in. This book begins with a threatening letter to Seattle-based investigative journalist Katelyn Thorsen. Composed of letters cut out of magazines, it’s almost comical in its warning to stop what she’s doing.
But what is it she’s doing? She’s working on multiple stories. The letter could be dismissed as a prank, except that KT has the creepy feeling she’s being watched. She texts a copy of the letter to her friend, June Cassidy.
June wastes no time alerting Ash, who’s based in Seattle, and he immediately tracks down KT to make sure she’s safe. He finds her just as a gunman appears on the scene. Ash scares him off and initiates a safety plan for KT and her 13-year-old daughter, Ellie. A typical teenager, Ellie thinks her mom and this stranger are unhinged as they try to hurry her away from her school friends. Then the shooting starts.
They have a harrowing few days reviewing KT’s files, trying to figure out what has triggered the attacks. Ultimately, they conclude her very preliminary effort to unmask something called Gun Club is what put her at risk. The group’s size and plans are unclear, but a recording made by the group’s leader includes repeated references to the Dark Time.
The Seattle police, predictably, don’t welcome Peter’s investigation and repeatedly tell him to stand down. Also, predictably, he doesn’t.
Meanwhile, the stakes keep rising as Peter, June and Lewis begin to understand Gun Club’s organisation and purposes. Peter is lucky in his friends. Both June and Lewis are ready for anything with both skills and trust. When Ash asks Lewis how he got them a replacement vehicle so quickly, given that he lives across the country, Lewis says, ‘I have a guy,’ and Ash thinks how Lewis ‘has a guy’ for everything. June knows her way around a gun and shoots with deadly accuracy.
Much of the plot follows the well-blazed thriller trail. Setbacks, turncoats, threats from multiple sides, nick-of-time rescues. Despite a certain predictability in the rhythm of the plot, this remains an immersive read, in part because it builds on the growth of the prepper and survivalist movements. People who take extreme measures to prepare against disasters, natural or manmade, and the anticipated social collapse can be found in every demographic group.
People who drop out of mainstream society and form retreat communities, like Gun Club, tend to settle in sparsely populated rural areas. They are stockpiling weapons, staying off the grid, growing their own food, and cultivating mistrust. Such extreme communities are typically influenced by more than a dab of paranoia, which is only exacerbated by spending time with like-minded folks.
The community Ash and his friends come up against has all those characteristics, along with a determination not to wait for disaster, but to create it. Millenarianism is the term for it, a fancy word for a group convinced that society is facing a fundamental transformation. Like the Dark Time. I’d like to have learned more about what made the group’s leader arrive at that pivotal point.
The Cascade Range is a wide mountainous region that begins just east of Seattle’s outskirts, and much of the action of this novel, as well as the survivalists’ retreat, is located there. It’s picturesque, though the driving is rough, particularly in the winter. The treks across the mountains that Ash and his friends must make are well described and may even bring out your acrophobia. They did mine.
While I found this story very engaging, the rising body count bothered me. Yes, there were bad guys, and probably even this fictional world was better off without them, but it stretched credulity when there were so few consequences. Not just from the authorities, but within the protagonists themselves. I couldn’t quite accept that, dangerous as these men were, the ‘good guys’ could get away with no repercussions. No confiscation of weapons, no ‘don’t leave town.’ Perhaps Petrie was merely sparing readers an endless series of hearings and judicial proceedings, but in a story that in so many ways rang true, this aspect felt false.
A decade ago, we reviewed The Drifter, the first book in this series, on audiobook.
Head of Zeus
Print/Kindle/iBook
£9.16
CFL Rating: 4 Stars
