The Kill Clause audiobook

An interesting take on vigilante justice, written from the perspective of a father whose daughter is killed. As always with Hurwitz, there is plenty of nuance and intrigue, and a host of well-formed characters to bring the story to life.

We find at the outset that a child has been abducted and murdered. Looking at this from the parent's perspective was positively unsettling. There were many moments that I would re-read a passage because of the turn of the phrase. My 2nd Hurwitz novel, and I look forward to more.

Tim Rackley, a U.S. marshal, quits to pursue the kidnapper/murderer of his young daughter. He is recruited by a group to review cases where justice did not prevail, with solving his daughter's case at the end as bait. However, his moral compass prevents him from completing the executions.

I've had this on my tbr for some time and now it's time to read the Tim Rackley series. Starting with The Kill Clause by favorite author Gregg Hurwitz. What would you do if your child is murdered and the murderer goes free due to some technicality? This is a really good book, well written and with a great story. The characters are superb and I will go to book two directly, because I want to know what will happen with Tim and Dray, and Bear of course. I can see where the seed to Orphan X comes from but this is more down to earth. If you like me has missed this series I recommend that you get started. It is really good.

Gregg Hurwitz is one of my favorite authors… he rarely disappoints me. Really liked Tim Rackley Character - but didn't realize this audio was abridged…. I do have to mention, Narrator - Peter Friedman - did an awesome job!

I think this is my new favorite book for the year....only took me until August to find one! The book opens with "Rack" and his wife Dray, who are both in law enforcement, finding out that their 7-year-old daughter has been found murdered. Her killer was rushed through a trial, and even though he confessed, he gets off because he is found to be deaf to the point that he has to read lips.....when they merandized him, his back was turned to the officer, and so the whole case was thrown out of court.Rack tries to go back to work, but things start falling apart around him. His boss wants him to claim he has anger issues just to smooth over a bust gone wrong, so Rack quits the force. He and Dray can't seem to grieve the same and lose each other. In the midst of all the mess, he gets propositioned by a man (Dumone) who says that he and his vigilante group has been looking for a trigger-man. This man and his group has picked seven criminal trials that ended with the criminal getting aquitted. The group will go over every inch of the trial and re-judge each case within the group. It has to be a unanimous vote to rule guilty. If they find the person guilty, Rack and a few members of the team will carry out the execution. Justice served. Rack struggles with the whole concept for a while until he is told that the seventh case they will be reviewing is the man who murdered his daughter. This is a well-planned and thought-out story. There are twists and turns, and it had me second-guessing what the ending would be. Looking forward to the second book in the series.

This is the first book in a series featuring Tim Rackley, a Deputy US Marshall. His wife is a sheriff's deputy. This book opens with the discovery of their 7 year old daughter's body. The book is primarily an action/suspense story, and Hurwitz keeps the pages turning very well. I was impressed by the job he did with the deeper story; the marriage, friendships, jobs...His writing is terrific. I've recently re-read a few books in the series, and they hold up well against authors like Michael Connelly and Lee Child. I'm going to seek out more of his work.

US Marshall Tim Rackley is one, efficient, clever, resourceful fighting machine...when he needs to be. After he and Dray his wife ( a sheriff) find out their young daughter is murdered, the rest of the story at times has some gut-wrenching moments. Their own thoughts and their battle to get through it together, and try to save their marriage.The action and technology devices keep this fast paced thriller moving along. An impressive start to this series.

Just not sureI couldn't decide between a three star rating or the more generous four star. This novel was not as believable as it could have been, while the characterizations were pretty good the characters actions were often not. A few good twists and turns are compelling in a good book, but some of these seemed contrived. Our hero Timothy endured a lot of painful bodily damage, yet somehow he always came back for more. I was fairly worn out by the final chapters.

A great start to the series. Tim Rackley is an entertaining new character! I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

Tim Rackley is a man of honor and a deputy US Marshall who is verygood at his job but everything that he believes in is shattered by thebrutal murder of his daughter. Betrayed by an imperfect judicialsystem he watches helplessly as a killer walks free on a legal tech-nicality. Devastated and furious he is forced to explore his own optionswhich leads him to a group called the Commission. This is a vigilante group made up of people like him forced to confront the failings of a legal system the sets predators loose. They clean up society's mistakes eff-iciently and permanently. As Tim's dragged deeper into their hidden agendas he discovers that playing God is a fearsome task. He is caught in the most terrifying struggle that he has ever faced. A desperate battle to savehis marriage, his career, his soul and everything left that's worth fightingfor.This book is from 2004 but it's a good story, very well written, and a page turner. I gave it a 5.

Ambushing a best-seller; movie to comeWhat makes this thriller worth reading are the two main ingredients: the sort of brute force expertise about cops and criminals that cannot be faked (replete with the siege-mentality psychology endemic in law enforcement), and the sort of narrative control that makes the pages turn. A third ingredient, a more than passing knowledge of high tech, crime-related gadgetry including some extensive weapons knowledge, nicely enhances the text, demonstrating that Gregg Hurwitz knows his stuff.Quite simply, Hurwitz is a very good writer who put an enormous amount of energy into the research, planning and writing of this novel. He is also a guy who, at least in part, is enamored of two-fisted justice and the action hero as seen in movies starring, e.g., Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, and Silvester Stallone. If you liked Paul Kersey, Dirty Harry, and Rambo, you will love The Kill Clause.Hurwitz begins with the tried and true formula for righteous vengeance so beloved by Japanese and Hollywood action/adventure movie-makers by raining grievous and horrific harm upon his upstanding (and very talented) hero Deputy US Marshal Tim Rackley. Hurwitz takes no chances here: Rackley's beautiful seven-year-old daughter is raped, murdered and mutilated by a sickie who is set free on a technicality. Then, when Rackley courageously and heroically shoots a couple of murderous drug dealers in self-defense, a front page newspaper pix showing his fellow officers celebrating with high fives turns a "good shooting" into a request that he take some time off while they investigate.Instead, Rackley turns in his badge. Meanwhile, because of their shared grief, his marriage to the love of his life is going south. He moves out of their Moorpark, Simi Valley, California home and takes up residence in a dive in the inner city of L.A.--all the better to provide cover as he sets out to right some wrongs.Now comes a counter-complication: Rackley is seduced by a motley crew of self-styled vigilantes who, through star chamber type trials, want to identify, judge, condemn and execute various violent criminals that the law has let go free for one reason or another. They want Rackley to do the executing, and they hold over his head as inducement the prospect of knowledge about others involved in the murder of his daughter.Where Hurwitz is not entirely the novelist he would like to be (judging from his self-conscious press-release statement: "I don't like being dismissed because I've chosen to address issues in a medium that's suspenseful and plot-oriented"), is in the shallowness of his characters and his handling of male-female relationships. While his hero, Tim Rackley is seemingly explored in great depth, one cannot escape the sense that Rackley is really just a fantasy projection of Hurwitz's youthful idealism. The minor characters are quirky, kinky and extreme in a fascinating way that blinds us to the fact that they are also as deep as a puddle on the linoleum kitchen floor. And the second most important character in the book, Tim's police officer wife, Dray Rackley, despite being both feminine and tough enough to flip pukes, is never really revealed as anything more than a TV, politically-correct kind of housewife. I would liked to have seen her do more than hold Tim's hand and run some errands.Hurwitz knows the genre and he knows the requirements. He is expert, and his expertise will pay off handsomely. But if he wants to go beyond the commercial novel to a work of art (and by the way, I'm not so sure he should) he needs to free himself from the psychology of the thriller novel, and follow the human truth wherever it may lead. (Of course the price for that will likely be no assured place on the best seller list and no movie option.)Let me give an example of what I mean. Hurwitz obviously read some stats on what happens to marriages when the children die young. The stats show that the now childless couples tend to have a higher divorce rate than other couples. Hurwitz worked this into a subplot as he made us see Tim and Dray lose their desire for one another and begin to drift apart as they tried, each in his or her own way, to cope with their tragic loss.However, if he had followed another kind of logic (say from evolutionary psychology), he might have had Tim and Dray become ravenously hungry for one another, a truth that I think would have been closer to the reality of his characters who, after all, deeply loved and were strongly attracted to one another. Indeed such a "truth" might have given their personas a psychological depth that they lacked. But would that play? Not in a novel aimed at a readership looking for escapist fare. Such sexual vérité would be distracting at best and disturbing at worst.One other thing: the theme of the novel could be summed up in these words: our courts "do not address justice--only the law." A press release quotes Hurwitz as saying something similar, and similar words appear in the book. This is a problem that haunts our society, but Hurwitz's novel does not provide an answer. Clearly the path chosen by Hurwitz's morally-challenged vigilantes can be seen to be rejected by the way the novel develops. But how do we provide both justice and remain within the rule of law? Perhaps a commercial novel is not the right place to answer such a question. I would note that one of the distinctions that Hurwitz does not make in this novel is between justice and revenge. The latter word hardly appears but "justice" is replete throughout. Perhaps a clear understanding between the emotion of revenge and the legal concept of justice is necessary before we can address the problem of violent criminals slipping through the cracks. --Dennis Littrell, author of the mystery novel, “Teddy and Teri”

I’m used to some action thrillers and I know one when I read one. This book has all the action it needs to be a great book. You can really see how Hurwitz practiced before starting his best books to date.Were there only good things about this book? Not really. In the end, it was very predictable. I kinda knew the plot when I was two thirds in the book. Read the full review at my blog.

Gregg Hurwitz is a master of the thriller. The first in the Tim Rackley series, Kill Clause explores vigilantism, the law, justice and morality within the tight, tense constraints of the genre, all while its protagonist is learning to grieve for his murdered child. Top off a page-turning story with truly amazing writing and emotions so true you feel Hurwitz must have gone through something similar and you have the makings of a terrific book.