★★★★½
Doubleday | 2022
Filed Under: Make Racists Afraid Again
I loved this instalment in the Alive Vega series.
LOVED.
I may be one of only a few giving this such a high rating, but I stand by it. It was sealed for me by the time Vega grabbed a bat and went on a Lemonade-esque rampage against white nationalists.
But it didn’t start out in a way that convinced me I was going to love this. When the novel opens with a college football scene and then Vega taking on the case of a footballer missing for 30 years, I thought, ugh not sports! But the football angle really is just the catalyst for discovering a Nazi movement disrupting a small town and all the murder and mayhem that follows as Vega takes it upon herself to deliver some “find out” after right-wing turds fuck around.
White nationalists and a missing athlete cold case is an odd combination, but it works.
Vega kicking white nationalist ass:
Me:
This is the third book in the Alice Vega series, and while each instalment can definitely be read as a standalone, I recommend reading from the top. Getting the full picture of who Vega is, and her relationship with Caplan is half the joy of the plot. And watching her personal arc evolve in such subtle and genuine ways, against a thriller backdrop, makes this one of my favourite series.
In this one, you get: private investigations, famous football kickers, airline heiresses, screwing up the big game, being missing since 1984, drum sets, car drifting, owning an entire town, handstands, baseball bats, paintball, conspiracy theorists, white nationalism, Reddit, baby Nazis, Nazi moms, Nazi tattoos, racism, misogyny, antisemitism, dirty cops, dead cops, making a deal with the feds, horse stables, building fires, vandalism, fireworks, fruity clay pigeons, lots of guns, headbutting, kidney kicks, rib kicks, punches to the face, spray paint to the face, broken wrists, broken patellas, cracked ribs, knife to the eye, missing teeth, bullets to the head, bullets to the chest, car smashing, phone crunching, threats, going on the run, father-daughter relationship goals, busted boilers, soft-close hinges, the longest Uber ride ever, stealing laptops, fake names, old love, skeletal remains, broken fences and romantic next steps.
Even though a lot of this novel is a wild thrill ride, it felt grounded and honest in what our social reality currently is — Nazis, right-wing insanity, and white supremacy existing in an insidious bubble. Acts of hate and violence and division get bolder every day. Pushing back against it, if you’re a sane, decent person, can feel all too much sometimes. Overwhelming and maddening, suffocating and disheartening. So to read a novel that felt true to that, but also saw a badass bitch beat the ever-loving shit out of those kinds of dickbags; to read a novel that saw some fucking comeuppance for once… it was a real pleasure.
I love a clever woman with a plan, who doesn’t take shit and always gets her way. It just does it for me.
This novel almost threw me off with the missing footballer in the beginning, but once I found my footing, I ended up really loving this. It’s so satisfying and fun, and just grounded enough to elicit some genuine emotions out of me, while also packing the pages full of explosions, gunfights and broken ribs.
And that ending? *Chef’s kiss*
Definitely on my list of favourite reads for 2024.
🔪🔪🔪
A powerful new thriller from Louisa Luna. Alice Vega and Max Caplan return, uncovering a network of white supremacists in their search for a long-lost counter-culture hero.
Alice Vega has made a career of finding the missing and vulnerable against a ticking clock, but she’s never had a case like Zeb Williams, missing for over thirty years. It was 1984, and the big Cal-Stanford football game was tied with seconds left on the clock. Zeb Williams grabbed the ball and ran the wrong way, through the marching band, off the field and out of the stadium. He disappeared into legend, replete with Elvis-like sightings and a cult following.
Zeb’s cold trail leads Vega to southern Oregon, where she discovers an anxious community living under siege by a local hate group called the Liberty Boys. As Vega starts digging into the past, the mystery around Zeb’s disappearance grows deeper, and the reach of the Liberty Boys grows more disturbing. Everyone has something to hide, and no one can cut to the truth like Alice Vega. But this time, her partner Max Caplan has his own problems at home, and the trouble Vega finds might be too much for her to handle.
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