Guess Again by Charlie Donlea

Charlie Donlea has written a series of tense, twisty thrillers and his new book Guess Again, while requiring a fair amount of suspension of disbelief, is no exception. The title itself may well be as much a challenge to readers as the main characters as Donlea constantly pulls the rug out from underneath their expectations and understanding of what exactly is going on but in the most enjoyable ways.

Ethan Hall was a successful investigator of gruesome crimes with a 100% solve rate, but the work took such a toll on him that he quit and retrained as a doctor. Hall now works in emergency medicine but is brought out of retirement when his old partner asks him to help investigate a cold case that involves reopening the investigation into the disappearance of the new Governor’s daughter ten years before. At the same time, Ethan is still trying to stop Francis Bernard, the man who killed his father and almost killed his current detective girlfriend when she was a teen (and who may well also have been a serial killer) getting parole. When these two endeavours come together, Ethan’s life starts to spin out of his control.

Donlea does a great job of establishing Ethan and his world early on and drawing readers into the story before blowing everything up. At the same time, he is not afraid to switch to alternate points of view to both sow a little distraction but also up the tension. In particular, the view of inmate Bernard who, after being in jail for over twenty years, is playing a long game, and the woman on the outside who is helping him set everything up. There are definitely some heist novel mechanics at work in this thread of the plot but a lot of the tension comes from readers not wanting to cheer for this Hannibal Lecter-level mastermind to succeed.

Guess Again is a great thriller that combines a couple of seemingly unrelated tales into a single twisted narrative. As already noted, a little suspension of disbelief is required, but Donlea smoothly leads readers through that process to the point where the pages are almost turning themselves. And while Guess Again could be read as a stand alone, with a great central cast and its final twisty revelations, Donlea leaves enough threads dangling to suggest a follow up.

Guess Again by Charlie Donlea

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8.0/10