[Dark Places of The Earth 01] • Blood Price

The Barnes & Noble Review

In The Blood Price, a sequel of sorts to Jon Evans's award-winning debut novel, Dark Places, continent-hopping backpacker and wanderlust-afflicted computer programmer Balthazar "Paul" Wood breaks the Prime Directive of trekking: Don't get involved.

The action begins in Sarajevo (still devastated by the effects of the civil war eight years earlier), where Paul and his Croatian-born girlfriend are visiting her sister. Paul soon gets involved in an illegal and perilous plot to get the sister out of the country and away from her psychotic gangster boyfriend, who happens to be the leader of a vicious local paramilitary group. In his desperate rush to elude this sadistic pack of wolves, Paul takes refuge in a dragon's cave by making a deal with a criminal overlord and "self-deluded dot-com CEO" who specializes in refugee smuggling. The agreement is simple: For safe passage to America, Paul must help design a secure web site that will exponentially expand the smuggler's many burgeoning criminal interests. But when Paul realizes just how unconscionably evil his temporary employer is, he decides to take matters into his own hands.

From war-torn Bosnia to the tropic paradise of Belize to the Nevada desert during the Burning Man festivities, Evans moves this action-packed thriller along at breakneck pace until its highly explosive conclusion. Fans of recent down-and-dirty thrillers like Charlie Huston's Henry "Hank" Thompson novels (Caught Stealing and Six Bad Things) and Will Staeger's Painkiller will thoroughly enjoy this comparable rip-roaring adventure. Paul Goat Allen