NOTHING SHORT OF DYING has received a bundle of pre-publication publicity, word of mouth, prodding, you name it --- some of it from very popular people in the book publishing world and probably including at least one of your favorite authors. It would be enough to make debut novelist Erik Storey (could he be anything but an author with that name?) somewhat nervous about living up to all that hype. If he is, he needn't be. NOTHING SHORT OF DYING injects just the right amount of adrenaline into the doldrums of the closing days of summer and gives thriller fans everywhere a new protagonist to follow.

"Storey is not reticent to creating intriguing, potentially popular characters on one page and taking them off the board on another, which makes it easy to assume that anything can and will happen in future volumes."

Clyde Barr is the book’s first person narrator, a scarred but still upright former soldier on just the right side of middle age with a skill set that moves him toward rather than away from trouble. Storey doesn’t waste much time getting Clyde into the thick of things in this inaugural volume. All it takes is a call from his sister, Jen, indicating that she is in trouble and needs to be rescued. Clyde has no idea where she is calling from or what has occurred, and he is, shall we say, technologically challenged to the extent that he doesn’t know what is potentially available out there to aid him in his quest, let alone how to activate it. What he does have, though, are friends and associates, most of them shady, all of whom are capable in a rough and dangerous sort of way. Soon enough he is following a tenuous lead here and a hint there while leaving a trail of bruised, battered and, yes, deceased bodies in his wake.

As Clyde moves from Point A to Point B and beyond, he reminisces about his past, going back to his rough childhood and the bond that formed between his sister and himself when it was basically the two of them against the world, and the dangerous vignettes that occurred in prisons, battlefields and urban alleys along the way. In the early days of the novel, Clyde also picks up a travelling companion and aide-de-camp in the person of Allie Martin, a former bartender who has her own score to settle with the lowlife who has kidnapped Jen. The abductor in question, a dangerous drug lord named Lance Alvis, is every bit as ruthless and driven as Clyde, who faces seemingly insurmountable odds, even as he gets ever closer to finding out where Jen is located. The question that echoes throughout the book is whether finding her will be enough; rescuing her may be something else entirely.

Comparisons between Clyde Barr and a certain fictional MP are inevitable, but while both are very capable and wandering loners, Clyde is certainly unique in his presentation. While much remains to be told of his past, much is revealed in the first installment of what is expected to be a long-running series. Storey seeds his debut work with plenty of potential story material for future books. Clyde made a lot of enemies before the events recounted here, and incidentally makes a few more during the course of the novel. Storey is not reticent to creating intriguing, potentially popular characters on one page and taking them off the board on another, which makes it easy to assume that anything can and will happen in future volumes.

Jump on the Clyde Barr train now; you’ll have less catching up to do later.