Book Review: Run by Douglas E Winter

I'm still disappointed that Douglas E. Winter has not been voted Grand Nabob of thriller writers on the strength of his extraordinary debut, Run. I plucked the book hungrily off the shelf on its first UK publication in 2000. Hey, if Elmore Leonard says, as the cover says he does, that this is a whole new school of thriller writing ("With a pace that takes your breath away"), then who was I to argue?

Mr. Leonard was spot on. The pace of this novel of the arms industry is exceptional. It goes beyond page-turning and the ever-twisting and ever-surprising plot will drag you along. The research must have been incredible. I am British. I know very little of guns, but this novel is a searing attack on the American small arms industry, in which our (very anti) hero, Burndon Lane, is involved up to the top of his Kevlar vest.

The whole sick process is spelled out as the plot zooms along, another run for Uniarms, delivering guns to New York gangs, which is where things start to go badly wrong. There's a fair amount of what must be classed as gun porn in the writing as Lane describes his company's wares and the crazy world of international gun sales.

I shall not describe much of the plot. It genuinely would spoil the book for any would-be readers, but it's beautifully handled. As I think we've established, it rattles along like a machine pistol. On first reading, I was initially put out by Winter's decision not to punctuate speech, but it's a decision I now think was right, even if it was only made to give the novel a sparer, cleaner look on the page. It succeeds in this and after a couple of pages you cease to notice.

Characters live and breathe, generally unpleasantly, but terribly realistically. Perhaps some of the street slang will already have dated, but that's a very minor gripe. The twists and turns will leave you breathless. I hope, like me, you’re wondering when Douglas E. Winter is going to write another novel.

Article Author: Colin Ricketts

Colin is half Welsh and half English and lives for most of his life in a third country, The Forest of Dean. Contact him at rickettswrites@gmail.com.
His electronic music, under the guise of The Reverend Spadge Dooley has been played at The Royal …

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