Hunting Time by Jeffery Deaver

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on November 22, 2022

Readers of the Colter Shaw series will know that Shaw was raised as a survivalist. He makes his living collecting rewards. The rewards are usually offered to find missing people, although they are sometimes offered by the government to provide information leading to the capture of fugitives.

Shaw begins the novel doing something like a sting to thwart the theft of a portable nuclear device from the private company that made it. That’s not the kind of assignment Shaw usually takes but a friend recommended him for the gig and he needs to earn a living. He works with the company’s security officer, Sonja Nilsson, who took a job in the industrial pit of Ferrington because someone published stolen government documents that outed her as a former military assassin.

The company's CEO, Marty Harmon, soon hires Shaw for another project. The company’s top engineer, Allison Parker, is on the run. Her ex-husband, Jon Merritt, went to prison for beating her. Now he’s out of prison. He told another prisoner that he planned to kill Allison and his daughter Hannah. Allison hit the road with Hannah, although Hannah doesn’t really believe her father would harm her.

Merritt is a former cop with a reputation for heroism. The law enforcement effort to find him is unenthusiastic. Harmon wants Shaw to find and protect Allison until Merritt is returned to prison.

The story follows the path of an action thriller. Two tough guys try to chase down Allison while Merritt uses his skill as a former police detective to deduce her hiding spot. Shaw and Sonja follow the trail, pausing once with the intent to shag before they remember the higher duty they owe to Allison and Hannah. The story gives action fans the usual array of fistfights, shootouts, and explosions.

As thriller heroes go, Shaw is more cerebral than violent, making the series a welcome change from thrillers that spend more time describing guns in loving detail than building characterization. One of the characters echoes NRA propaganda by claiming that an assault rifle is no different than a deer rifle, as if anyone hunts deer with an M4. The NRA proudly used the term assault rifle before it decided to discourage its members from doing so. Gun enthusiasts often gravitate to tough guy thrillers so Jeffery Deaver may have included a gratuitous recitation of propaganda to please those readers. But since the guy who makes that claim is a murderer, maybe Deaver is subtly sending the opposite message. Who knows? I can only say that Shaw is handy with a gun but doesn’t make them his life.

Shaw has the annoying habit of calculating odds in terms of percentages. He decides there is a “10 percent chance” of something happening when it would be more accurate to say there is a “low risk,” as he has no actuarial or statistical basis for the percentages he invents. The percentages are a gimmick. He also likes to quote rules that his survivalist father taught him. Rules are another gimmick that have become popular in modern thrillers. As much as thriller writers like to substitute gimmicks for personalities, I wish they wouldn’t.

Fortunately, the gimmicks don’t distract from the plot, which quickly moves to the kind of resolution that readers seem to like. The story takes some welcome (because they are unexpected) twists — not every character is who he or she seems to be — but by the end, characters generally lie in the bed they’ve made. This isn’t the kind of novel that allows an innocent character to die or evil deeds to go unpunished.

This novel seems to set up the next one, continuing Shaw’s efforts on behalf of a corporate employer and perhaps giving him an opportunity to finally shag Sonja. Whatever happens, Deaver has established the Colter Shaw series as one of the better choices for fans of action novels.

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