Category: Peter Ash

Tear It Down by Nick Petrie: Things Get Rough for Peter in the Home of the Blues

Tear It Down

Tear It Down

by Nick Petrie
Series: Peter Ash, #4

Hardcover, 368 pg.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2019

Read: October 9-11, 2021
Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!

Outside, the air was thick and threatening rain. Spring in Tennessee. Peter strode across the wide concrete apron toward the road.

Go to Memphis, June had said. Eat some barbecue, listen to music, have some fun.

So far there had been no barbecue and no music.

Was it wrong that he might be having fun?

What’s Tear It Down About?

Peter’s been recuperating and rehabbing from his injuries from Light It Up at June’s—he’s about as recovered as he can be and is spending his time doing some upkeep and repairs on some of the buildings. But being in one place for so long is getting to him. He doesn’t see it, but June does.

June has a friend, Nadine, in Memphis. She’s a photographer who’s done a few tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, embedded with various groups. She’s back home in Memphis and has recently purchased a house at auction. Since then, she’s been harassed and could use some help. So June sends Peter off to lend a hand.

The morning before he arrives at Nadine’s, someone had driven a dump truck through the front of her house and then ran off. The truck is still there, which is what’s keeping some of the walls from falling. Clearly, he’s got his work cut out for him.

The work gets complicated the next day when Peter’s carjacked. No, really. A teenager with a pistol sticks Peter up, stealing his truck (with all his tools, food, and weapons) in the back. Peter likely could’ve stopped him, but chooses to let the kid get away with it for some pretty good reasons.

So now, he has to try to stop further attacks on Nadine, help her rebuild the house that she’s determined not to leave, and get his truck back. Oh, and immediately following the carjacking, Peter offended the drug lord who runs most of the crime in that part of Memphis—but you’ll want to read all that for yourself.

A Man Called Lewis

Lewis decides that Peter needs help (with a little input from June) and shows up just when things are getting hairy.

If I’ve noticed it before, I don’t remember—but Lewis here is essentially Robert B. Parker’s Hawk. There’s one conversation between Lewis and Peter that could’ve been lifted straight from a Hawk and Spenser conversation by Parker/Atkins, too.

It works, too, don’t get me wrong. I am kicking myself a little for not having seen it before, but I don’t think it was as strong—maybe that’s because of the themes/circumstances in this book that it stands out so much.

So, what did I think about Tear It Down?

There’s a significant racial component to the events and circumstances of this book. This added a little depth to the novel, it’s about more than people trying to get money and power, as is usual for these books. Sure, there’s money and power at the root of a lot of what’s going on here—but there’s a degree of hate that wasn’t around either.

There are also two characters who are just trying to survive in a world that seems hostile—and increasingly so—to them. They just need a break, a chance to do something, but it’s taken from them at every turn. The question for them is what they do in these circumstances—and what the results of their choices will be for those around them.

There is a significant toll on those who just happen to be near Peter and Lewis when things get ugly between them and those who are harassing Nadine. Peter notices this and it bothers him—it’s one thing in war for there to be collateral damage, but there was no reason for anyone injured (or worse) here to be in danger. It will be interesting to see if this experience has an impact on how he deals with things in the future.

This one had it all—great action, a compelling story, some good social commentary, and some time with characters I’m really growing attached to. Nick Petrie and Peter Ash continue to be a winning combination.


4 1/2 Stars

2021 Library Love Challenge

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, opinions are my own.

Light It Up by Nick Petrie: Peter Ash Throws a Monkey Wrench into a Denver Conspiracy

Light It Up

Light It Up

by Nick Petrie
Series: Peter Ash, #3

Paperback, 381 pg.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2018

Read: December 28-29, 2020
Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!

“I could really use your help,” Henry told Peter. “Maybe a week, two at the most. Just until I get things squared away,”

Peter didn’t have to think before he answered.

“No problem.” He’d send June a postcard. Maybe leave out a few details. He didn’t want to worry her. “Sign me up.”

Later, he’d wish he’d answered differently.

He’d have plenty of reasons.

But he knew he’d have answered exactly the same way.

What’s Light It Up About?

Peter meets and befriends a Vietnam vet on a project in Oregon. His friend, Henry, needs to return home to Denver—his daughter and son-in-law run a security company, escorting money for the cannabis industry. On a recent run, the son-in-law and his team went missing (along with the money). Henry needs to go help run things and hopefully come across a clue about the disappearance. He asks Peter to come along, and he does.

Four days later, Henry, Peter, and two others are taking care of another shipment of money. It’s a very routine run—until it’s not. They’re attacked by a group of professionals and it’s a very ugly event.

It’s no longer about Peter trying to help out a friend, it’s now about Peter striking back at the people who attacked his team and making sure they don’t do anything like that again.

A Three-Headed Monster

There are essentially three villains to this book. I’d like to talk about all three of them, but I don’t think I really can without taking something away from the experience—one calls the shots, one is the man on the ground making the plans and seeing that they’re implemented, the third is the guy who carries out the plan.

This latter we’ve seen before—he’s all about killing and raping*—maybe a little pillaging while he’s at it. He really just wants to watch the world burn. The man at the top is another guy we’ve seen before (a good version of him, don’t get me wrong).

* No, he doesn’t rape anyone in this book. There are some passing references to times he has, and he definitely looks forward to doing it in the future.

It’s the middle man that’s the guy who captured my attention. The man at the top is probably convinced he’s doing the right thing (for at least some people), the guy at the bottom of the chain of command doesn’t care about right and wrong. But the other one—he knows that what he’s doing is wrong, he is deliberately choosing evil. He has compelling reasons for that, but he’s going in with his eyes wide open.

Also, he has an interesting tie to Peter, one that adds a new layer to Peter.

No Army of One

Peter likes to think of himself as a lone wolf—he can do it all himself. Maybe even thinks he needs to (the book delves deep into this toward the end, but I’m not interacting with that part). But he’s not one—unlike Jack Reacher (the easiest guy to compare him to) who will pick up an ally or two for a book, and then will leave them in the dust while “The Lonely Man” (from The Incredible Hulk) plays in the background.

Peter didn’t want to leave June behind, but needed to (and wants to get back to her). And while he considers Lewis a friend, doesn’t try to get him involved in his messes. But they don’t let him—he needs help, so they come to him, over his objections.

Peter’s an action hero for our time—he’s dealing with PTSD (not stoically enduring, he’s trying to deal with it, he’s got a counselor), he has a sense of humor, and he’s a social creature. He needs people—for community and for assistance from time to time—and he’s the kind of guy that people are drawn to.

There’s a moment where Lewis describes why Peter’s men followed him where they did in Iraq. It’s something about his personality, is leadership, his character—he still has that, he just has different people following him in the trouble spots in the U.S.

The Lone Wolf Hero is a mainstay, it’s a fixture in Fiction—but a hero like Peter? He’s so much easier to believe. Easier to root for. He has more to lose, so you care more for his success.

A Missed Opportunity

When it looks likely that Peter’s going to be facing some legal troubles, Lewis arranges for a lawyer for him. She comes on the scene like some sort of oversexed Rita Fiore (from the Spenser/Jesse Stone series), intimidating police and protecting Peter. She’s not cartoonish, but she’s trending that way. She has a couple of good scenes, but then she practically vanishes.

This isn’t a legal thriller, and a lawyer shouldn’t play a huge role—but if you’re going to put a flashy character show up, use them. There’s no reason to believe that she’ll be around in future books—unless Peter moves to Denver.

I did like her, I thought she had some good scenes, but it felt like hiring Meryl Streep to play a role listed as “Lady in Restaurant” in the credits.

So, what did I think about Light It Up?

This series gets better and better. I thought the whole idea of the security for the cash shipments for the new (at least then) cannabis industry in Colorado was great. It’s the kind of thing that was just waiting for a thriller writer to jump on, and Petrie took full advantage before anyone else saw it.

There’s a mano a mano fight at the end—fantastic. Just fantastic. There’s plenty of action before that—a chase scene, the ambush of the security team, and some others—just those would’ve been enough to make me commend and recommend this thriller. But that climactic combat? Just wonderful.

Like with Burning Bright, I lost sleep over this—and did not care. Solid (at least) action, an ingenious premise, good character development, some well-written and well-conceived antagonists (scratch that, they’re flat-out bad guys). There’s nothing to complain about here. Get your hands on this one.


4 1/2 Stars

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, opinions are my own.

Bullet Points about Burning Bright by Nick Petrie: There’s No Sophomore Slump in the Second Peter Ash Adventure

Burning Bright

Burning Bright

by Nick Petrie
Series: Peter Ash, #2

Hardcover, 416 pg.
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2017

Read: May 11-14, 2020
Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!

He climbed down to the dry riverbed, hurting all over but more or less functional. His forehead felt warm and wet. He put his hand up, felt the slickness of blood, and wiped it away, reminding himself that head wounds always bleed like crazy.

He knew too much about damage to human bodies.

This post is overdue (as was reading this in the first place), and I can’t seem to find time to do it right. So, I won’t. Here’s a quick and dirty way to get it taken care of. I wish I had it in me to do a better job, but I don’t. Here’s the blurb taken from Petrie’s site:

War veteran Peter Ash sought peace and quiet among the towering redwoods of northern California, but the trip isn’t quite the balm he’d hoped for. The dense forest and close fog cause his claustrophobia to buzz and spark, and then he stumbles upon a grizzly, long thought to have vanished from this part of the country. In a fight of man against bear, Peter doesn’t favor his odds, so he makes a strategic retreat up a nearby sapling.

There, he finds something strange: a climbing rope, affixed to a distant branch above. It leads to another, and another, up through the giant tree canopy, and ending at a hanging platform. On the platform is a woman on the run. From below them come the sounds of men and gunshots.

Just days ago, investigative journalist June Cassidy escaped a kidnapping by the men who are still on her trail. She suspects they’re after something belonging to her mother, a prominent software designer who recently died in an accident. June needs time to figure out what’s going on, and help from someone with Peter’s particular set of skills.

Only one step ahead of their pursuers, Peter and June must race to unravel this peculiar mystery. What they find leads them to an eccentric recluse, a shadowy pseudo-military organization, and an extraordinary tool that may change the modern world forever.

If I had the time to do this properly, here are the things I’d be talking about.

bullet At multiple points both Peter and June note that Peter’s having fun when it’s dangerous, when things are violent, when the bullets are flying. As a reader, this is great—you don’t see Reacher, Charlie Fox, Evan Smoak, etc. enjoying things quite like this. But I’m a little worried about what it says about him as a person.

bullet We get some good backstory on Peter—before he enlisted.

bullet On a related note, Peter has a family! A well-adjusted, not violent, family.

bullet Lewis is back from the first book—he’s essentially Hawk and Pike with flair. His growing family ties are a real strength of character.

bullet June is tough, capable, smart. She’s complex in a way that most characters in this role usually aren’t, and really ought to be.

bullet The villains in this novel are great. Their motives are complex, they don’t approach things the way you think they’re going to (up to the last couple of chapters).

bullet While trying not to give too much away, I appreciate that Ash doesn’t have a scorched-earth approach to his opponents in either book.

bullet Best of all, in the middle of the technothriller stuff, the action hero stuff, and all the rest, there’s a real attempt to portray what a vet with PTSD goes through. How it molds everything he does, but doesn’t define him.

bullet The biggest compliment I can give is this: it kept me awake when I should have been. Since I got my new CPAP last summer, I haven’t been able to read more than 2-5 pages with it on before I’m out like a light. So imagine how shocked I was when I realized that I’d barreled through over 50 pages one night! That’s a feat.

This is a great thrill-ride, I’m not going to wait another year and a half before I get to the next one (it’s sitting on my shelf as we speak). I strongly recommend the Peter Ash books.


4 Stars

2020 Library Love Challenge

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, opinions are my own.

The Drifter by Nicholas Petrie: A Near-Perfect Thriller Debut that You Won’t Want to Miss

The DrifterThe Drifter

by Nicholas Petrie
Series: Peter Ash, #1

Trade Paperback, 371 pg.
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2015

Read: August 16 – 17, 2018

Peter pushed the truck hard toward downtown, the city roads rough with potholes, trying to get to Lake Capital begot they closed the doors for the day.

One eye on the rearview, watching for the black Ford. But it would be easy to miss in heavy traffic. And Peter’s truck would be easy to follow. Unless he was willing to rent a beige sedan, he couldn’t do anything about it.

He didn’t have a plan for Lake Capital. But the principle wasn’t complicated. It was the same principle he’d operated under for years.

Poke a stick into something and see what happened.

This approach to problem solving isn’t new — Philip Marlowe employed it, Spenser loves it, Harry Dresden has invoked it — and I’m pretty sure a certain homeless former MP has mentioned it a time or two. It may be tried and true — but that’s only because it works really well (at least in fiction). Peter Ash is one of the leading candidates for “the next Jack Reacher,” so he might as well employ it, too. It’s a very effective stick in this instance, I should add.

Now Reacher, as you probably know, was a career Army MP, the son of a career Marine officer — he’d spent his entire life living on military bases until his discharge following the Army’s downsizing after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In reaction to that kind of living, he’s taken to walking all over the US, getting to know the country. Peter Ash is a recently discharged Marine Lieutenant, with a couple of degrees in economics, who is wandering around the country a little bit. His reason for it differs from Reacher’s, since coming back to the States after tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Peter has panic attacks anytime he’s indoors — he calls it “white static.”

This has led to him essentially living in the woods for the past few months, until he heard that his former sergeant and friend, Jimmy Johnson, has killed himself. Peter quickly came to Milwaukee to visit Jimmy’s wife, Dinah. He wasn’t around to help his friend, but maybe he can assuage his guilt by helping out with some much needed home repairs on his behalf.

He starts with the front porch — and while he’s working on it, discovers a hidden suitcase filled with money, and four bricks of plastic explosive. This seems strange, Peter hides the bricks, and gives the money to Dinah. Around the same time, a mysterious figure comes by looking for something (probably the suitcase, but he never mentions is). The two of these together gets Peter’s curiosity piqued — and he sets out to find out what his friend was up to before he died. He barely beings this before someone tries to kill him.

Peter survives, and becomes even more certain that something is going on — Jimmy was on to something just before he died. Peter has to find out what — to honor Jimmy’s memory, protect Dinah and her two sons, and maybe get a little peace for himself — maybe find some forgiveness for failing to help Jimmy.

This isn’t just guy wanders into town, finds trouble and starts hitting/shooting things and people until the problem is solved. Peter has to think, he has to investigate, he takes wrong paths, he really needs to find a shower and a way to clean a very large dog — which isn’t saying anything about the investigation, it’s just another thing he has to do along the way (still, harder problems than you might expect when you throw in his white static). There’s plenty of hitting and shooting, but it’s not the focus.

Yes, Peter is very much in the Reacher mold — but he’s different in very significant ways. The ways in which he’s not Reacher make him a fascinating character on his own. He has a sense of humor, he’s lonely, he’s a bit more self-reflective — he knows that he didn’t come back from the wars whole and intact, and is seeking to fix that. Maybe. He’s got a different kind of education, and a different way of looking at the world. The ways he’s similar to Reacher (good with weapons, devastating to hand-to-hand combat opponents, fast thinking, strategic, etc.) simply ensure that he’s fun to read about. Both of these sides together give us a Thriller protagonist that’s a sheer pleasure to read.

So Peter has “White Static”, Jimmy clearly had problems adjusting to being back home, but they’re not treated as the only ones — there are many others seen and talked about in this book. It’s not done exploitatively, it’s done to highlight the problems and the many, various ways they can be addressed successfully. Nor are they talked about in a way that suggests everyone who comes back from combat service comes back damaged. Nothing is universalized or generalized. I’m certainly not speaking from any kind of first, or even second-hand, experience here — but it appears to me that Petrie dealt with these psyches in just the right way — compassionate, understanding, and accepting.

As there is an element of mystery to the story, I’m not going to talk about the villains much. But they are just as good as the rest of the book — wide-ranging motivations, differing levels of commitment to the enterprise, they’re not all cookie-cutter types. They are not cartoonish, they are not super-villains. They are straight-from-the-headlines evil though. I could absolutely see something like this happening and it working.

I could have spent more time with just about every other supporting character — not in a “hey, you could’ve developed them better” way, but in a “I liked them and enjoyed Peter’s interactions with them” kind of way. Sure, that would’ve involved more character development, but not because they were lacking anything, it just would have worked out that way. Dinah’s an ER nurse with a lot of grit, and isn’t sure what to think of her late husband — but is dedicated to being the best mom she can to their kids. Charlie, their oldest, has learned a lot from his dad and is trying his pre-teen best to live like he should and be “the man of the house.” There’s a woman from the Veteran’s group that tried to help Jimmy who is a wonderful character, too. I could say more about her and the other supporting characters, but you should meet them yourself.

The last advantage that this one has over any of the Jack Reacher novels — and frankly, most Thrillers, is Mingus. He’s a very large dog that Ash finds living under the porch at his friend’s house (that porch led to the discovery of a lot) — he’s a bigger, nastier version of Walt Longmire’s Dog. Just as friendly, too — toward people not being threatening, anyway.

Okay, I obviously found this fantastic. The tension was high throughout; the pacing was fantastic; the actions scenes were fast, furious and believable; the story was clever and yet sensitive to current events, and the people represented by the characters; the stakes were real and believable; Peter’s code and the code(s) of those around him are wonderful to think about, examine and possibly try to adopt. They don’t get much closer to perfect than this — I’m definitely picking up the next two in the series as soon as I can, and I can’t wait to talk about them without nearly so many references to Jack Whatshisname.

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4 1/2 Stars

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