The Big Finish by James W. Hall

Published by Minotaur Books on December 2, 2014

As readers learned in Going Dark, Thorn Moss' son Flynn belongs to the Earth Liberation Force. One of ELF's missions takes Flynn and some other activists to a hog farm in Kentucky where they hope to expose animal cruelty. What Flynn and his companions discover leads to their disappearance.

Thorn and his friend Sugarman set out to find Flynn. A woman who has befriended Sugarman comes along for the ride. They are eventually joined by a woman named Madeline Cruz who flashes her FBI credentials and insists on joining the party, much to the dismay of Sugarman's friend.

The novel's bad guys include a brother-sister team who own North Carolina's biggest hog farm but make their real money in an illicit sideline. Even more nefarious is a "Straight Edge" character named X-88 who has the olfactory sense of a bloodhound. That seems silly but James W. Hall surprised me by making it work.

In fact, the entire novel works surprisingly well. Thorn admits that he is not equipped for subtle thinking (he solves problems by "kicking down doors, a monkey wrench in each hand") but he is a solid character with a reasonable amount of depth. The plot unfolds in ways that are never obvious and, if the twists are often unlikely, Hall managed to convince me of their plausibility. Chase scenes, escape scenes, and fight scenes all seem too easy for Thorn, but on the whole, the novel is no more farfetched than the typical modern thriller.

The Big Finish conveys an intelligent message about ill-considered laws that treat people as "terrorists" who commit property crimes but it avoids taking political positions. The pace is steady. The ending, building on the estrangement between father and son, is powerful and touching. In short, The Big Finish is a solid thriller -- unspectacular but significantly better than average.

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