THE DETONATOR had me at the jump, and not simply because it is written by veteran word scribe Vincent Zandri. This explosive stand-alone work from the author of the Jack Marconi series (among others) begins with a five-word sentence that sinks and pulls the hook. It then introduces a basically decent but humanly imperfect protagonist whose understandable but nonetheless very wrong shortcoming indirectly leads to a tragedy. That implausibly propels the balance of the novel at breakneck speed without an ounce of waste. Please believe me when I tell you that it really doesn’t get any better than this.

Let’s go from the general to the specific. THE DETONATOR begins in October 1999 with Ike Singer experiencing one of the most important moments of his life. His company, Master Blasters Inc., is about to implode a 15-story warehouse in lower Manhattan. Things go horribly wrong, though, resulting in Ike being injured and his partner and co-owner, Brian Darling, dying. The catastrophe is indirectly related to a major indiscretion that Ike made a few months previously. What we gradually learn as the first-person narrative shifts to the present is that, in the aftermath, Ike lost his company and his demolition license.

"Zandri’s prose reads as if he was typing with one hand and holding a stopwatch with the other. THE DETONATOR moves at warp speed. There is no good place to stop, so plan on setting aside a few hours to read it all in one gulp..."

Ike, his wife Ellen and their son Henry (who is afflicted with progeria) are now living in Albany, New York, where Ike assists the police department’s bomb squad. While on a family vacation, however, his past collides unexpectedly with his present when the secret he has kept hidden from his wife for almost 20 years is threatened to be revealed. Even worse, he learns that there were consequences to his mistake --- of which he had been unaware --- resulting in the creation of a deadly, angry and brilliant enemy who has decided to take vengeance on everything Ike cares about. The revenge begins slowly, but over the course of a very long 24 hours, Ike’s entire life and world will be turned upside down in the worst ways possible as he and the city of Albany bear the full brunt of a rage that has festered for almost a lifetime.

Zandri’s prose reads as if he was typing with one hand and holding a stopwatch with the other. THE DETONATOR moves at warp speed. There is no good place to stop, so plan on setting aside a few hours to read it all in one gulp, as it goes down best that way. And let me pause for just one minute and tell you why I am in awe of Zandri and his latest work. One thing that put the book over the top for me was that the motivating factor of the antagonist is a deep-seated, long-festering revenge, which is a familiar plot element in thrillers. A bothersome issue that it often raises is “Why satisfy the revenge now?” That is not the case here. Zandri asks that question --- out loud --- and answers it near the conclusion, in case the reader hasn’t figured it out by then. He also name-drops a classic film that comes to mind during the first third or so of the book, so I won’t do it here.

Speaking of movies, someone needs to adapt this novel to video, and soon. Zandri’s cinematic writing style should make it easy, and while the film could never be as good as the book, the right person with the right budget has a chance of coming close. Don’t wait, though. Read THE DETONATOR now.