Five Minutes Alone by Paul Cleave

Published by Atria Books on October 21, 2014

Except for Ahab and people who share his obsessive nature, the desire for vengeance is a passing emotion. Those who do seek revenge cause dire and unintended consequences without finding the closure they crave. On the other hand, those who want their better selves to prevail sometimes entertain a revenge fantasy, even if they never carry it out. The conflicting desires that are part of human nature are at the heart of Five Minutes Alone.

Paul Cleave writes novels that his publisher calls Christchurch Noir. Five Minutes Alone is the fourth in the Theodore Tate series. It makes frequent references to events from earlier novels that had a traumatic impact on DI Tate and two of his colleagues, but the backstory is filled in so completely that this can easily be read as a standalone novel.

Five Minutes Alone opens with Kelly Summers on the verge of being raped by Dwight Smith for the second time. In the chapters that follow, the police are investigating Smith's death, Smith having been splattered by a train. The police soon discover that the death was not be a suicide, which leaves Tate wondering who deserves New Zealand's gratitude for ridding it of Smith.

We learn early on that the vigilante dubbed The Five Minute Man by Christchurch journalists is Carl Schroder, who was a detective and Tate's partner until he was shot in the head. Crime victims used to say to Schroder, "Just give me five minutes alone with him." Freed from the constraints of law enforcement, Schroder has a new sense of what constitutes justice. He not only wants to give people their five minutes, he virtually forces them to rekindle the fires that have cooled with the passage of time.

The story pits old friends Tate and Schroder against each other, although Tate lacks the reader's early knowledge that Schroder is contributing to the latest crime spree in Christchurch. Tate has his own experience with revenge killing and is not well positioned to place moral judgment on Schroder. The question that the reader ponders for much of the novel is how Tate will handle the conflict. Five Minutes Alone is a story of divided loyalties -- each man has the ability to bring down the other, but will he do it?

When I started reading Five Minutes Alone, I thought it would be another mundane vigilante novel. I was wrong. The story is surprisingly subtle and its message reflects the complexity of human emotion. The struggles that the characters experience seem authentic and heartfelt. The novel features snappy action scenes that are more original than is common in action-based thrillers, but its true value lies in the evolution that its central characters experience and in the different perspectives that secondary characters provide to illuminate the meaning of justice. The novel's fault is its predictable ending, although the last few paragraphs I did not anticipate. Still, Five Minutes Alone is about characters and philosophy more than plot.

RECOMMENDED

The Killing Hour by Paul Cleave

Published by Atria Books on April 23, 2013 

The Killing Hour takes place in Christchurch, New Zealand. An author's note tells us that the novel was originally written as a horror story. It didn't sell and, to make it marketable, Paul Cleave rewrote it as a crime novel. The Killing Hour retains the creepy feel of a horror story, which is good and bad. Good because creepy is fun, bad because the creepy events that transpire in horror stories tend to be predictable.

Charlie Feldman's story -- the confusing story he tells Jo, the wife who separated from him six months earlier when he beat up a man in a bar -- is that he met a blood-covered woman on the road who told him her friend was being held by a lunatic. He went into the forest at night and found a woman tied to a tree being threatened with a metal stake by a guy named Cyris. He thought he killed Cyris but now Cyris is after him. The rest of Charlie's improbable story is unveiled, bit-by-bit, as the novel progresses. Having watched the news, both Charlie and Jo know that two women were recently found dead. Charlie, with good reason, worries that he'll be the prime suspect in their murders. Jo becomes embroiled in his ordeal as she -- like the reader -- wonders whether Charlie is a delusional murderer or an improbable victim.

The case is assigned to Detective Inspector Bill Landry who, with six months to live, has no incentive to follow the rules of criminal investigation. He's becoming a guy who is willing to do bad things for good reasons, a trait he despises in others. Mistaking vigilantism for justice, Landry makes it his mission to rid the world of Charlie. As a Dirty Harry wannabe, Landry is a stereotype, but he's more interesting than most stereotypical vigilante cops.

The first half of The Killing Hour, with all its unanswered questions, engages the reader's mind. The second half requires little thought, including a final chapter in which Charlie struggles (but not for long) with a moral decision. The plot isn't particularly believable, given its dependence on an evil character who has an almost superhuman ability to endure pain and survive injuries that would kill most people, but that's become standard thriller fare. The vestiges of the horror novel this once was, including a couple of ghosts, could have been eliminated entirely without doing harm to the story.

The Killing Hour is predictable and formulaic, but it's also fast moving and enjoyable (at least for fans of mayhem). The action scenes in The Killing Hour are vivid, particularly the gruesome ones. The excitement factor is high even if the story holds no surprises. Predictable endings can still be satisfying, and that holds true as The Killing Hour's relentless violence finally reaches a climax. Had The Killing Hour maintained the suspense it generates in the first half, it would have been a better novel, but as it stands, it isn't bad.

RECOMMENDED