A Voice for Independent Authors

“You can kill a book quicker by your silence than by a bad review.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri

REVIEWING TODAY: ACCOUNTABLE BY E.V. STEPHENS

That satisfying moment one picks up a cop/detective novel and hears the perfect pitch and perfect sardonic humor of the genre’s best, as one does when opening Accountable by E.V. Stephens, must be like a music lover’s first hearing a brand new talent hitting all the notes just right. A little “oh boy” escapes the lips, just like an eager kid at the movies … “this is gonna be fun!” The promise of gruesome violence is like the gravy on potatoes. Okay, enough metaphors, or similies. What I’m saying is that Accountable opens fast and hard and strong, with the kind of humorous asides that keep the grimness in its place. Val Benchik, the novel’s homicide detective, recently (and I mean, just the other day) was widowed by a disgruntled bank customer of her husband, and yet she dutifully arrives at a current grisly homicide scene, and though enduring vivid flashbacks of her husband’s violent death, she sets to work doing what she does best. The reader, meanwhile, was quite conveniently hooked at “hello.”

E.V. Stephens spends the rest of her taut thriller Accountable reeling you in, sometimes giving you some illusive breathing slack, then ratcheting up the tension and the curiosity even more. I’m not sure that fish think their last rides are fun, but the comparison seems apt. The author does stretch her plot credibility a bit near the book’s finale, but to this point she has been ever faithful to the genre, ever engaging with her characters, ever providing of emotionally satisfying subplots to pull the heartstrings, and one must admit, she does manage to stay just within the bounds of credence. And the honest reader will admit, it doesn’t matter that much anyway. The ride was simply too much fun; the story too well told.