Review: Retribution by D.V. Berkom

 

Genre: Thriller/Historical/Western

Description:

“Spring 1880: Claire Whitcomb and her family are building a good life near the boomtown of Leadville, Colorado, when tragedy strikes: a group of renegades attack, killing everyone but Claire and burning their home. Not knowing who to turn to, Claire teams up with Mart Duggan, the town’s tough-as-nails marshal, to track down the outlaws responsible. Duggan and his friend, Thomas, a local Ute, skirt the law to get results, but that’s fine by Claire.

She’s gunning for the men who destroyed her life—and won’t settle for anything less than retribution.”

Author:

“DV Berkom is the USA Today bestselling author of action-packed, riveting adventure and crime thrillers. Known for creating resilient, kick-ass female characters and page-turning plots, her love of the genre stems from a lifelong addiction to reading spy novels, action/adventure stories, and thrillers.”

Appraisal:

As DV Berkom’s bio states, she writes books featuring kick-ass females as the lead character. This book is the first of a new series featuring Claire Whitcomb. She definitely fits that pattern, in that she can figuratively apply the foot where it needs to go. But she’s also different than Leine Basso and Kate Jones, the stars of Berkom’s two series prior to this, in a couple ways. The most obvious one is that rather than happening in contemporary times Claire is operating a few years prior to Kate and Leine, in the 1880s to be exact. That difference in time and place is the most obvious difference, but if you’re a fan of Berkom’s other books, you’ll spot other differences as well.

This story is intense, with the reader pulling for Claire to not only avenge the death of her children for reasons of justice, but also to protect herself from shouldering the blame and to position her to be able to move on with life as much a possible. Claire is an extremely likeable character. I don’t read a lot of historical books, especially westerns, but find that I enjoy them when I do. That was the case with this as well. While this story comes to a clean end, it ends with you wanting to continue finding out what happens to Claire next, and there are at least two other books that are scheduled to follow this in the series, possibly more.

Buy now from:            Amazon US        Amazon UK

FYI:

This is the first book in the series.

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant issues.

Rating: ***** Five Stars

Reviewed by: BigAl

Approximate word count: 20-25,000 words