Hard Rain is a nail-biter of a suspense novel, part mystery and part espionage thriller, and Peter Abrahams is a writer with credentials as long as your arm, including being Stephen King’s favorite American suspense novelist. After reading this skillfully woven tale I can see why. My thanks go to Net Galley and Open Road Integrated Media for the free galley. It was one wild ride!

Hard Rain is set in the period after Vietnam, but prior to the time when satellites revolutionized our means of communication. Our opening scenes involve a mysterious, sinister fellow named Bao Dai. His murder of a stranger for no apparent reason sets the reader on edge, and the surreal tone the writer lends is better than anything I have ever seen. In fact, the writing style and pacing are so brilliant that until I stumbled across some unexpected but fairly glaring problems in the last quarter of the book, it was headed for a five star review and a home on my favorites list. But more about that later.

Our chief problem, once the initial set up flashes past us, is that Jessie’s daughter is missing. Her ex-husband, Pat Rodney, took her for the weekend. They were going to go fishing, and then she was going to be returned to Jessie in time for a birthday party. But they never made it to the fishing boat, and there are some ominous messages on Pat’s answering machine. Kate never came home, and Jessie has no clue where she is.The cops aren’t all that concerned, seeing it as a routine custody violation that will surely be resolved on its own, but Pat has never been responsible, and has never ever wanted full custody; Jessie just doesn’t think he would snatch her. Her best friend, Barbara, is a no-holds-barred lawyer, and she’s ready to get down to business, but she is killed by a hit and run driver as she goes to cross Jessie’s street, wearing Jessie’s yellow rain slicker. That one person was the entire cavalry; now Jessie is on her own.

It just doesn’t look good.

The trail takes Jessie to Bennington College in Vermont. Pat was originally from Vermont, and she thinks he may have gone home, or at least contacted his family. And once there, all hell breaks loose. A particularly harrowing scene involves a chase scene in a subterranean tunnel beneath the dormitories.

A parallel storyline that blinks in and out has to do with an aging spy named Zyzmchuk, who is about to be sent out to pasture. Keith and Dahlin, a snappy, younger pair of more business-like spooks, plan one further adventure for “Zyz” in the hope that when it’s over, he’ll either be dead or leave quietly. These two, for some reason, made me think of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, the two sinister advisers that did President Nixon’s bidding at times, and at other times kept him on a leash to keep him from acting crazier than he already was. Maybe it’s because I am also reading Tim Weiner’s galley about the Nixon presidency. I have to say that of all the myriad characters that wink in and out of this complex, deliberately disorienting story, Keith and Dahlin are my favorites.

The imagery, with water and falling being constant themes throughout this spooky story, is among the best I have read, together with a deceptively simple sentence pattern that creates suspense in something of a house-that-Jack-built fashion. I still can’t figure out how he does it. It’s uncanny, and really absorbing.

So, even with the problems toward the end, is this creepy novel worth your time and money? Assuming you enjoy this sort of story, I have to say yes, it is. In fact, this writer won the Edgar earlier in his career, and that early title is now on my to-read list. I probably won’t find it as a galley, which means I have to hunt it down at the library, or fish around for it on my annual pilgrimage to Powell’s City of Books. So what follows was not enough to cross this writer off my A list, by any means. And now if you read further, there are going to be spoilers, so if you want to read this yourself and not know how the ending shakes out—or at least bits of it—this is the place to quit reading. And for those skimming, I will make it more obvious:

*****SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT!!!*****

We are 75% of the way into the story. Jessie has been beaten by bad guys, and has been rescued, medical attention sought by our very own spook, Zyzmchuk. He is keeping an eye on her partly for her own good (awww), but also so that she doesn’t get in his way, because her mission interferes with part of his. He sets a guard to watch her when he has to go out, but otherwise, he sits in a chair in her hotel room there in New England, keeping watch over her. She is a sweet young thing still; he is retirement age.

And so there she is, with a nasty concussion and a number of other bad injuries, worried about her missing child, and so what would be more natural than inviting this duffer, a man as ancient as I am now, to come climb in bed with her so they can have great sex?

What the hell?

“’Shit,’ said Dahlin.
“’Fuck’, said Keith.’”

Okay, that quote belongs much earlier in the book (and more than once), but I like it here just as well, so I have taken the liberty of inserting it. Because really…what is that about? Did someone in marketing decide the book needed some gratuitous sex in order to sell properly? Go figure.

At the 85% we have to wonder whether some bad editor also cut out a chunk of story that should have been more judiciously and lightly pruned, because when Jessie sneaks out of her hotel room to try to find her daughter, she returns to find that Zyz, the guard Zyz posted while he stepped out, and all other apparent spooks and body guards have decamped. We, the readers, know that the guard in her hotel room was killed after she snuck out, but we don’t know where the hell Zyz went. And the next time we run across him, he is strolling into his office in Washington as if nothing untoward ever occurred. There is never any real explanation for this bizarre leap in the plot.

All that said, once again, I would happily read more of this author’s work. His capacity to create a frisson of chilly suspense far outweighs the Hollywood-like choice to dump the hot chick in bed with the old guy, as well as what may have been an editor’s error toward the conclusion.
*****END OF SPOILER ALERT!*****

This book will be released digitally July 28, and you can get a copy anytime you like now. What better way to spend a vacation, or even a staycation? Just stay out of the water, and definitely keep an eye on your kids. You won’t want them out of your sight while you read this story!