Tag: revenge

Robowoman

  By

★½
“Roboring.”

Winner of the 2021 award for Movie Least Like the Poster, we have another poverty row production from the man who gave us Nemesis 5: The New Model. And by “gave,” I mean, no-one in their right mind would pay for it. This is little or no better, though likely benefited from being watched the same evening as Hellfire, which made Robowoman look as if it was unjustly overlooked by the Oscars. It was not a good night, shall we say. The only saving grace was Chris being out, otherwise I’d have had to cash in my entire annual allocation of martyr points. Anyway…

It’s 2024 Los Angeles, and black-market surgery offers cures for almost all ills. A dinner date for Vivica Stevens (Heising) goes wrong when she’s raped and left for dead by Jonathan (Nation) and his pals. Dodgy physician Dr. Michaels (Novak) saves her and outfits the victim with a robo-arm and robo-eyes. Vivica returns to life with her housemate, Evangeline (Price), but is overcome by an urge to use her new-found robo-talents to take revenge on Jonathan and the other perpetrators. But at what cost to her humanity?

First thing: Heising is in her late sixties, though dresses like a woman half her age (let’s just say, I don’t think her encounter with Dr. Michaels was the first time she’d gone under the knife…). While respect is due, it still makes the whole rape thing highly suspect, and some other scenes, such as the gun dealer who comes on to her. The action here is also pure, undiluted shit, largely due to Ferguson’s complete inability to film it. Multiple scenes are shot from behind Vivica, with her completely obscuring any action. Or it may even be a stand-in; her head is frequently cut off by the framing too. I repeat: pure, undiluted shit.

I did quite like Price, who has an easy-going nature in her performance, which appears to have strayed in from a better film. There’s also a scene at a self-defense class where Heising actually emotes to semi-decent effect. However, these elements are vastly outweighed by negatives, such as the lengthy scene of the heroine eating a pizza. Or the robo-arm which is obviously just a plastic glove, while her robo-vision looks like a 99-cent Geordi LaForge accessory from Party City. Or even the sense of location being derailed, by the Los Angeles cops that stop and question Vivica and Evangeline, sporting Texas patches on their sleeves.

With some adjustments, and a budget in line with the script, this might have passed muster. As is, we have to try and believe that hanging up some decrepit blue tarps makes a room a hospital. That’s more effort than this deserves and if you can manage it: well done. Even a walk-on part for scream queen Brinke Stevens (maybe they should have made her the heroine?) at the end, is unable to elevate this to the level of watchable.

Dir: Dustin Ferguson
Star: Dawna Lee Heising, Sue Price, Jonathan Nation, Mel Novak

Hellfire

  By

★
“Hell would, on the whole, be preferable.”

Ir’s not often that I feel my life has become a tiny bit worse for having seen a film, but Hellfire may just about qualify. It’s such a mean-spirited and unpleasant experience, weighed down further by technical ineptitude and actresses who can’t act. Any potential in the somewhat interesting idea – which makes for a good synopsis, at least – is entirely wasted. Someone is killing young women, apparently in an attempt to protect Father McKenzie, a priest under investigation for alleged sexual abuses of pupils at a Catholic school. Chucky (Mercedes) rounds up two of the girls from her class, tattooist Athena (Peach) and stripper Lilly (Divine). After surviving some attacks from a man in glasses (Hoffman), and a betrayal from a former teacher, they decide to go on the offense and track down the pedopriest.

The first fifteen minutes kinda live up to that, albeit in an obviously cheap way – and Lilly is the worst stripper ever, failing to remove even a single item of clothing. I think the point at which this jumped the shark was the extended scene of the trio smoking weed and dropping acid. Watching other people take drugs is among the worst cinematic sins. Would anyone pay to watch me sink a six-pack of beer? Exactly. It is, admittedly, a drug trip necessary to the plot, since it allows the women to recall their abuse at the hands (literally) of McKenzie. But, especially in a film which runs barely 70 minutes including credits, it’s a waste of time. Things only go downhill from there, with the movie basically killing time as they develop their Catholic schoolgirl vigilante personas. Which isn’t anything like as interesting as it should be, attention being diverted by faux pas like the claim the previous victim’s deaths were made to look like natural causes. Oh, so the woman we see in the opening scene, getting hung from a rope in her shower, tripped on the soap or something?

Then there’s the final attack on their former school, where they face the man in glasses, in what may be the worst fight scene in cinematic history, despite the director’s efforts to jazz things up by throwing bad digital FX and screechy sound on top of it. The three then take their revenge on Father McKenzie, and I guess I have to thank the film for introducing me to a genuinely new experience: feeling sorry for a pedophile. Because the former victims’ behaviour is so vile, and carried out with such an abundance of glee, as to make me lose all sympathy for them. It doesn’t help that, of the lead actresses, only Peach knows how to deliver a line with anything inhabiting the same continental landmass as authenticity. The brief running time turns out to be a merciful release, as I don’t think I could have stood a full 90 minutes of this. Let us never speak of it again.

Dir: Moses
Star: Mercedes the Muse, Knotty Peach, Irie Divine, Shawn Hoffman

Girl

  By

★★½
“Axe me another question.”

Thorne appears dedicated to destroying the wimpy image created by her role as the heroine in Twilight. A little while ago, we reviewed Chick Fight, in which she played the bad-ass nemesis at a female fight club. Now, she’s the unnamed heroine (whom I’m going to call Girl, as the credits do), who shows up back in her home-town of Golden after a prolonged absence. She has returned to protect her mother (Lavallee) from her estranged father, only to find someone beat her to the punch. Dad is dangling, lifeless, in the shed, and those responsible are after a stash of cash which he supposedly squirreled away. Not helping matters, those responsible are led by the local sheriff (Rourke), and they are convinced Girl knows where the money is. Fortunately, Girl has acquired some unusual survival skills of her own, in particular, throwing a mean axe, as suggested by the poster.

I would say though, the film would have benefited from more axe-tion, as it were. While it’s established early on that’s she’s packing in this department, you have to wait a good while before the payoff comes, and it’s merely adequate. Until then, there’s the feel of a modern Western, not least in the lack of people – if the streets here don’t quite have tumbleweeds rolling across them, they might as well have. Into this, moseys the lone gun-slinger (or axe-slinger) into a town both controlled and terrorized by corrupt leaders, seeking to right a personal wrong, with the side benefit of cleaning up this here territory. The locals give what support they can, yet are too scared to actively fight back, leaving the heavy lifting to Girl.

While a convincing depiction of small-town America as hell, there’s also a curious lack of tension here. Golden is the kind of place which feels like it would be ground zero for the opioid crisis, yet that seems to have infected the film, with most scenes feeling like they have taken Oxycontin. There’s just such a lack of energy in all the performances. Even Rourke, whom you would expect to bring a certain swagger to the role, as lord of his domain, opts for largely understated, to the point of gently soporific. Of course, as expected, deep-buried family secrets end up getting revealed, not least concerning the relationship between the sheriff and  Girl’s mother.

Thorne gives a decent performance, as someone who has clearly been through a lot, and come out the other side embodying the phrase, “That which does not kill you, makes you stronger.” It feels as if director/supporting actor Faust is aiming for Winter’s Bone, and probably comes up short, perhaps because Girl is too abrasive to be sympathetic. She’s the kind of girl whose sports the chip on her shoulder as ostentatiously as the piercing through her nose, and that’s probably not the kind of character with which I want to spend time. And similarly, if I never go back to Golden again, I’m probably fine with that.

Dir: Chad Faust
Star:Bella Thorne, Mickey Rourke, Chad Faust, Tia Lavallee

Red Blade

  By

★★★
“Ninja family values.”

Poor teenage girl Mako (Ogura) is having a pretty crappy time of it. Her parents are feuding over money troubles, she’s getting bullied at school, and then, her father ends up arrested for fraud. But, just when things are their lowest, she gets a paper-cut. For reasons that are never entirely explained, this opens a portal through a storybook to a different world, which proves to be rather better. There, she becomes a ninja trainee, learning the skills under master ninja Saizo (Sakaguch), alongside co-trainees Hiro (Tsukimiya) and Yu (Hanakage). At first, things go very well, with her new talents helping her self-confidence and letting her handle the school bullies.

Then she discovers Hiro and Yu’s stories: they are orphans, training for revenge on Kansuke (Joey Iwanaga), the man who killed their parents. And, it turns out, he is also capable of existing both in this world and the “real” one. He has been duelling with Saizo for hundreds of years (in a thread not unlike another Sakaguchi film, the sublime Versus), and also has a hand in the misfortunes which have befallen Mako’s family. The question is, whether the trio of young women have the necessary skills to take down Kansuke, even with the help of Saizo. And if they do, what will that mean for the “storybook” universe?

This opens with close to a 10-minute, almost wordless fight sequence, in which Saizo takes on a slew of enemies (weirdly, I noticed their corpses seem to vanish after being dispatched, though this may just be because of the nature of this world). Things then go very much into a low gear as far as action is concerned. Instead, we have to deal with Mako’s domestic dramas and woes, then her training: and there’s a lot needed, as someone whose skills initially prove more a threat to her friends than her foes. Fortunately, time in this realm is independent of time in the real world, otherwise she’d probably middle-aged by the time she reached the necessary skills. It’s all pretty low-key, enlivened only by the trio’s first mission, to steal some floor plans. The fighting here is rather too informed by fast cutting and jerkycam to be of note.

However, it does redeem itself very nicely with the final battle against Kansuke and his many minions, which goes through a series of combinations, before settling down into Kansuke vs. Mako. This is really good stuff, and does a much better job of showcasing the skills of the various participants than the earlier action scenes, with Ogura standing out unexpectedly well. I will say, the ending has to be considered among the most abrupt I’ve ever seen, and is only slightly defused by the inclusion of a mid-credit sequence, tying up some of the loose ends. The script for this was written by Sion Sono, who gave us Tag. This isn’t nearly as good, yet the strong finish leaves me looking considerably more kindly on it, than it seemed I would at the half-way point.

Dir: Takahiro Ishihara
Star: Yûka Ogura, Kanon Hanakage, Himena Tsukimiya, Tak Sakaguchi

I am Lisa

  By

★★★
“Another packet of Ginger Snaps”

Lisa (Vaganos) is a young woman who runs a second-hand bookstore, but has fallen into the bad books – hohoho! – of local bad girl Jessica Huckins (Anello) for some reason, who makes poor Lisa’s life a misery. There’s little Lisa can do, because Jessica’s mother (Halliburton) is the local sheriff and is fiercely protective of her daughter. The feud between Lisa and Jessica escalates, until it topples over into extremely violent unpleasantness. Sheriff Huckins orders Lisa’s near-dead body to be dumped in the nearby forest, as food for the local wolves. However, after only slight nibbling, she is rescued by a mysterious woman, and nursed back to health. Returning to town, she opts to lie low with best friend Sam (Seward), only for Lisa to notice she’s not the same person she used to be. For example, this former vegetarian now has a fondness for raw meat, and is considerably less passive, deciding to take the fight to Jessica, her pals and, eventually, to Sheriff Huckins.

I’ve seen werewoman movies before. Indeed, I’ve reviewed a few here before – most obviously Werewolf Woman, but also When Animals Dream, Blood Redd and The Big Bad. I’ve also seen plenty of revenge films, to the extent there is a dedicated tag for those on the site. But this is probably the first movie which is both. Such innovation is almost enough on its own to get through the running time, even if it’s inevitably going to be compared to the wonderful Ginger Snaps, and be found wanting. Bonus points here for skewing so thoroughly female, with the five lead characters all women, and it’s also clear there’s a lot more going on, of which Lisa is unaware. The opening scene proves this before we see the heroine, with the sheriff gunning down another werewolf and proclaiming “I guess we gotta find another.” Given this, it is a bit difficult to grasp why Jessica’s cronies are so surprised by subsequent events.

The script is rather undeveloped in some of the other directions it seeks to explore. For instance, it opens with two quotes, one pro-revenge, the other anti. Yet there’s never much sense that Lisa’s vengeance is other than justified, and it appears to have a relatively minor impact on her psyche. Well, compared to turning into a werewolf, anyway. It also took me a while to get into the head of the main character; Lisa as savage predator is considerably more interesting and engaging than Lisa as vegetarian bookshop owner. Obviously for budgetary reasons, the actual transformation is very restrained – not much more than claws and contact lenses. I guess it’s good enough to get the concept over, if you don’t look too closely. The restraint elsewhere is a bit disappointing, and harder to explain: I never got the sense Lisa was overtaken by, or surrendered to, her newly-found feral nature. However, it still makes for an interesting watch, even if the central character is more werepekinese than -wolf.

Dir: Patrick Rea
Star: Kristen Vaganos, Jennifer Seward, Manon Halliburton, Carmen Anello

Pistolera

  By

★★
“Fires mostly blanks.”

At the time of writing (year end, 2020), this is sitting at a 1.9 rating on the IMDb. That’s… not good. In fact, if it had more ratings, it would be lower than any qualifying film in the IMDb Bottom 100, currently led by Disaster Movie at a score of 2.0. However, like most things, the hype exceeds the reality (I automatically down-vote any “worst movie ever!” review I see on IMDb; it just demonstrates you really haven’t seen enough movies for your opinion to matter). While this certainly isn’t good, with obvious and glaring flaws… I’ve seen considerably worse. even in the action heroine genre.

It’s a basic story of revenge, and the story/script are okay. The titular heroine (Di Lella, who also wrote it) was the daughter of a crime boss in Spain. She saw her father murdered by a rival, Raffaello (Davi), when she was young, though she was able to escape death. Now a grown woman, she clearly believes in the old proverb about revenge being a dish best eaten cold. She is ready to exact vengeance on Raffaello, his gang, and anyone who stands in the way, so travels to Los Angeles to that end. There, she links up with her cousin, Rico (director Chapa pulling double-duty) and a family friend, reformed hitman Indio (Trejo), who agree to help with her mission.

Let’s start with the positives. These include things like the young Pistolera letting rip with a mini-gun during the attack, a scene which is so excessive I had genuine hope for the movie. I will say that Di Lella looks the part, with a fondness for midriff bearing outfits and pleather halter-tops, which is undeniably easy on the eye. The poster does not sell this short, and delivers on what you see there – given that is not always the case in exploitation cinema, credit must be given where it’s due. Genre veterans Davi and Trejo also provide their usual credible performances.

However, it would be a generous man who would say these are not outweighed by the negatives. Not the least of which is the star’s limited grasp of English. Now, it’s far better than my Spanish, which despite ongoing Duolingo courses and frequent exposure to telenovelas, is still down around the Donde esta la biblioteca? level. However, I’m not being cast as the lead in any Spanish films. Oh, Di Lella gets the individual words out okay: what’s missing is any significant emotion behind them. A text-to-speech generator would have given a better performance.

It’s therefore startling to reveal she isn’t the worst offender in the film. That goes to Marta Blanc as Cherry, an informer whom Pistolera and Rico pump for information. She delivers a big gobbet of exposition which a) utterly violates the “show, don’t tell” rule of cinema, and b) is almost entirely indecipherable. There are other woeful elements too. For example, not one, but two gratuitous flamenco numbers for De Lella. Or the crappy “tattoo” of angel’s wings and crossed pistols, which looks like it was drawn on her back with a marker. Or action scenes which rarely reach even average. All told, while I don’t agree with those who proclaim it the pinnacle of cinematic ineptitude, I have to concede you can probably see it from here.

Dir: Damian Chapa
Star: Romina Di Lella, Damian Chapa, Robert Davi, Danny Trejo

In Cold Blood, by Mark Dawson

  By

Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A woman called Beatrix, who has made her living as a killer for a shadowy group, find herself betrayed by them, with her husband killed and daughter kidnapped. Escaping their clutches years later, she vows to take revenge on them, one at a time, working up the chain to find the man who ordered the heinous deeds. Yeah, this sounds just a little like Kill Bill, doesn’t it? Indeed, the cover sports a black and yellow color scheme, clearly designed to evoke the Bride’s jumpsuit – and at no point does the heroine here wield a Samurai sword. It’s all so blatant that I can only presume it was done deliberately, though there are certainly some differences.

Not the least of which is the cancer from which Beatrix Rose is suffering, putting an expiration date on her quest. She also has rather more official sanction, since the group in question was part of British intelligence. Since they’re keen for the group’s former head, Control, to be taken out of play, due to what he knows, she still receives help from them, albeit in a thoroughly deniable way. Much of this book is concerned with the hijacking of a cargo ship by Somali pirates, since one of her targets is working as security on the vessel; they’re subsequently held hostage by Islamic terrorists. This complicates her mission significantly, and the action mostly consists of Beatrix infiltrating Somalia, in order to extract her vengeance under cover of the confusion caused by a SEAL rescue mission.

I liked the heroine, even if the nature of her grievance is kept somewhat obscure (I would presume it is revealed in more detail, either later in the series or in one of the three prequels. Alternatively, it may be revealed in another of the author’s works, the John Milton series). She is motivated by a fierce love for her daughter, with whom she has been re-united and whom she is now training – I suspect this will come into play down the road, too – and there’s absolutely no doubt about her competence. Given her ticking clock, there’s no time for romance here, but it still feels like the story is being stretched out; the pages devoted to the hostages add little or nothing to the story we care about.

To be honest, at $4.49 (or $22.45 for the five-ebook set), it’s not particularly good value, considering it comes in at less than 190 pages, excluding the inevitable preview of volume 2. I only picked it up following an accidental purchase of Kindle Unlimited for six months. If you have that, it is probably worth a read, and if time permits, I may end up going deeper into the series, since further volumes (mostly $4.99 each) are included in my KU subscription. It’s not dull, certainly. However, the majority of people are likely better off watching Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, which offers just as much mayhem, for considerably less time and expense.

Author: Mark Dawson
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 5 in the Beatrix Rose series.

Hollow in the Land

  By

★★★
“Hollow, I must be going…”

This feels like a Canadian version of Winter’s Bone; not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with this, it just results in a slight sense of deja vu. The Miller siblings are already pariahs in their small town. Their mother walked out on them, and father went to jail for a car accident which killed the son of the local sheriff. Brandon has become a teenage delinquent, whom his sister Alison (Agron) is trying to keep from going off the rails entirely. And she’s a lesbian, so isn’t exactly popular either. After the father of Brandon’s girlfriend turns up dead, he vanishes, becoming suspect #1. Alison can’t believe he’s that bad, so goes looking for him. In the process, helped by a sympathetic deputy (Ashmore), she begins to uncover a lot of unpleasant secrets – things the town would much prefer stayed buried.

For the majority of this, it likely fell short of qualifying for the site. Alison has an undeniable persistence, certainly, and her unwavering loyalty to her brother is also laudable. However, the closer she gets to the truth, the greater the importance of physical action becomes. The likely turning point comes when she is out in the woods, and comes across the body of someone who has been shot. The shooter is still nearby, and has Alison in his sights. Thereafter, following an amusing encounter with a pair of female marijuana growers, it becomes clear that talk is no longer getting it done, and it’s time for her to take action. Anyone who says, “Violence isn’t a solution” won’t be happy with the results. But that’s why the film is getting reviewed here!

It’s a very good performance from Agron, who takes a spiky character and makes her easy to like and root for. Alison is someone to whom life has not dealt an easy hand, yet she still persists in trying to do the right thing, in particular towards Brandon. It would certainly be easier, and perhaps even justifiable, for her just to throw up her hands and walk away, leaving him to the consequences of his actions. That unrelenting sense of family is the reason I applied the “mother” tag to this one, even though she’s his sister.

My main issues are likely to do with the plot, which seems to have a number of weaknesses. The biggest one is the identity of the actual murderer. Their motivation fell some way short of feeling compelling, and as a result, their actions seemed more contrived, than flowing naturally out of their situation. There’s also a certain repetitive approach, especially in the front two-thirds, up until the woods incident mentioned above. Seeing Alison approach other residents, and get told to go away, in less polite terms, does get a bit old. And, for Canada, there seem to be a lot of guns around… However, Agron’s performance is enough to hold together this slice of small-town noir, and makes it worth sticking around for the (likely inevitable) bloody finale.

Dir: Scooter Corkle
Star: Dianna Agron, Shawn Ashmore, Rachelle Lefevre, Michael Rogers

Firecracker

  By

★★★
“Less a damp squib than expected.”

Admittedly, I did have to pause this five minutes in, because I had a strong sense that I’d seen it before. Turns out that wasn’t the case, I was just confusing it with another Cirio Santiago movie. There are quite a few candidates, but I think it was most likely Angel Fist. For both films feature blonde Americans, going to the Philippines in search of an errant sister, and have a kung-fu scene in which the heroine’s clothing proves optional, if you know what I mean and I think you do. So confusion is understandable.

The heroine here is Susanne Carter (Kesner, who ended up becoming well-known as an Orson Welles historian!), whose sister has vanished after getting too close to a criminal gang run by Erik (Metcalfe). They are nothing if not broad in their empire, which as well as the usual drugs, prostitution and gambling, also include martial arts death matches, put on in what appears to be a supper club. Dinner and a show, as they say. This is convenient, since whaddya know, Susanne has a sixth dan black belt in such things. She uses her skills to impress Erik’s similarly kung-fu able henchman, Chuck Donner (Hinton) and get close to the operation, seeking the truth about her sibling’s fate. However, turns out there is already a police operation investigating the gang, and Susanne’s presence puts that undercover case at risk.

The martial arts here are… not great. Kesner just about reaches decent on occasion, although there seems to be clear doubling going on for the more athletic moments. However, the film certainly has no shortage of action, and some of the supporting cast are good enough that the film passes muster as overall entertainment. Easily the greatest sequence is the one where Susanne is pursued on her way home by two street thugs, and through a series of misadventures, her costume is steadily reduced, going from an evening dress and high heels to, by the end of the fight, just a pair of panties. I can honestly say I have never previously seen anyone’s bra be cut open with a scythe in the middle of a fight.

That sequence, along with the villain’s demise – bamboo stakes get shoved into both his eyes simultaneously! – and the quite glorious poster (click on the image to see it full size), are sufficient to make me willing to overlook most of the film’s obvious flaws. This is very much the kind of thing  meant, when people talk about the eighties being a golden age of action movies on VHS. This is certainly not a good movie, fun though it is to see the likes of Diaz – an almost ever-present sidekick, who was to the Philippino film industry, what Michael Ripper was to Hammer Films. Yet if I’d stumbled across this for one of my all-night video sessions during the decade, it would have left me thoroughly satisfied, having given me everything I was looking for.

Dir: Cirio H. Santiago
Star: Jillian Kesner, Darby Hinton, Ken Metcalfe, Vic Diaz

Russia Girl by Kenneth Rosenberg

  By

Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆

Natalia Nicolaeva in a 19-year-old, living with her parents on a farm in Transnistria, which I imagine most people would be hard-pushed to find on a map. Per Wikipedia, “it is a breakaway de facto state in a narrow strip of land between the river Dniester and the Ukrainian border that is internationally recognized as part of Moldova.” Now you know. She lets her friend, Sonia, convince her into taking up a job offer overseas which – probably inevitably – turns out to be the gateway to them becoming the victims of sex traffickers, imprisoned in a Turkish brothel. Natalia manages to escape, though pays a heavy price, and the man in charge of the gang, Goran Zigic, has not forgotten her either.

When his revenge reaches back across the continent to Transnistria, Natalia has to defend her family. Fortunately, she has an ally in Gregor Multinovic, a shady individual who has taken up residence locally, and about whom any number of whispered rumours circulate. He knows of Zigic, and helps prepare Natalia for what she needs to do, as she takes the fight to her enemy. This is likely a necessary angle, in order to establish an ordinary farm girl as a plausible opponent to the Serbian mafia, and I felt Rosenberg handled this very well, without letting Gregor take over for his heroine. It does still require a bit of suspension of disbelief in some elements, e.g. Zigic not bother to hide or beef up security at his home after Natalia’s first attempt. But it’s no more of a problem than you’ll find in many films.

It does take quite a while to get to that point. The first third is concerned with her initial capture, abuse and eventual escape. It all seems almost scarily plausible; by and large, it likely reflects the sad fate of many Eastern European women every year. The middle portion covers the return to her village, training under her mentor (though this is largely skipped), and subsequent return to Istanbul. Again, however, considering this is intended to be an origin story, that’s fine, and the eventual payoff is solid and acceptable. While the first in a series, it wraps up neatly without a cliffhanger or loose ends, which is always nice.

In terms of its setting, I was reminded a little of how Killing Eve‘s Villanelle came to be, though it’s clear that Natalia does not have anything like the same psychopathic streak. There is something of the same sense of a butterfly emerging from a caterpillar, in Natalia’s transformation through the hand of fate, from someone whose life is the epitome of peace and quiet. By the time we reach the end, it’s clear that has gone forever, and it’s that sweeping character arc, along which the reader travels with her, that is perhaps this book’s most outstanding feature.

Author: Kenneth Rosenberg
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the Natalia Nicolaeva Thriller series