Die Next by Jonathan Stone

Published by Grand Central Publishing on April 14, 2020

The first part of Die Next reads like a mediocre short story. So mediocre, in fact, that I considered giving up on the rest of the novel. The good news is that the novel gets better. The unfortunate news is that, by the end, it descends back into mediocrity.

Zack Yellin is at the counter of a coffee shop when he notices that the guy next to him has the same iPhone. He happens to see the guy unlocking the phone by punching numbers in a simple pattern. The guy, Joey Richter, mistakenly takes Zack’s phone, leaving his own on the counter when he departs. Zack unlocks it using the password that he conveniently knows and calls his own phone to arrange for a swap. But when curiosity or nosiness causes him to look at the phone’s contents while waiting for Joey to return, Zack discovers that Joey is a hired killer. Joey took photos of his victims as proof of death and didn’t bother to delete them.

Zack’s dilemma is that Joey now knows that Zack may have seen incriminating evidence. Zack decides that fleeing is the better part of valor, but Joey now has Zack’s phone, giving him contact information for Zack’s girlfriend Emily and his best friend Steve, who both become targets Joey can use to get his phone back.

Why doesn’t Zack just go to the police? Because that would bring the story to an abrupt end. He actually does go the police but leaves because he doesn’t think the police will believe him, photographic evidence notwithstanding. The improbable decision not to report murder evidence to the police sets up an improbable resolution of the novel’s first act.

The novel becomes more interesting when Zack agrees to do a solid for Joey after Joey is improbably acquitted of murder. Yes, the story is based on a good many improbabilities, too many to overlook, which is the novel’s chief weakness.

Zack’s good nature leads to tension with Steve and Emily, both of whom Joey tried to kill before he was captured. Jonathan Stone kept me reading by bringing characters together and driving them apart. Steve and Emily both endure credible conflicts between their feelings about Zack and their failure to understand why he’s trying to help the man who tried to kill them all. I particularly like the portrayal of Joey, who prefers prison life to the real world, where he has no need to think for himself. Joey only works as a killer on the outside because he doesn’t know what else to do. I wouldn’t want to be Joey’s neighbor, but as sociopathic characters go, Joey seems realistic. He doesn’t have any particular desire to kill anyone, he just isn’t bothered by doing it.

While interesting characters and Stone’s straightforward prose style kept me engaged, I was put off by the contrivances that keep the story going. Stone doesn’t seem to understand much about the justice system. After Zack beats the first murder rap, he’s set free while prosecutors wait weeks to have him arrested on new charges. That’s not how prosecutors behave when they know they can bring new charges against a murderer. While Joey is waiting for the inevitable return to jail, a murder victim files a wrongful death suit against him that proceeds to trial within weeks after it is filed. Joey is the defendant but he only learns about the trial when he gets a subpoena to come to court for the first day of trial. That isn’t how the system works. It isn’t even how subpoenas work. But the plot needs to bring Joey to court to further a ridiculous scheme orchestrated by the guy who paid Joey to be a killer. That scheme again involves Zack and a confusion of phones. Nice try, but I just didn’t buy it.

Die Next is a novel that almost works, but not quite. While it doesn’t make for a disagreeable reading experience, the plot has too many flaws to earn an unqualified recommendation.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS