Shaw receives a brief note from his grandfather, asking him
to come home. Home means Seattle. Van Shaw is a scarred,
strong man with years of military work behind him.
Arriving at his grandfather's place, Shaw is just in time
to scare off an intruder, but not before the elderly man
has been harmed. PAST CRIMES are about to catch up with the
living.
By introducing the characters at a vulnerable moment,
author Glen Erik Hamilton captures our sympathy. Not long
after, however, we're learning that Shaw's Irish
grandfather Dono is far from a blameless man. If you keep
bad company, you can expect problems. But what would be
worth trying to murder him? In this first book of the Van
Shaw series we need to be introduced to the characters and
at the same time, we need to find the ruthless intruder.
Via flashback, we learn that this is not the first time
Shaw has seen Dono get hurt.
Shaw hasn't set foot in Seattle in years. He moves around,
meeting his grandfather's colleagues past and present,
remembering some amiably but making new enemies of others.
When his painstaking work shows up home-made bugs made from
cellphone parts in his grandfather's home, Shaw takes them
to some locals to get information on who might have planted
the bugs, and why. Somewhere there must be a recording of
the shooting of Dono, and Shaw intends to find it.
The flashback to a caper or two is certainly educational,
and shows how hard it is to stop determined professional
thieves. Shaw has been a good soldier, decorated for saving
others, and perhaps it was his upbringing that made him
willing to take risks and at the same time to calculate the
best move. He's a character who is being well fleshed out
for us, in order that we'll want to follow his next moves
through the series. The women are varied in age and levels
of sass, refreshingly normal with none of your glamorous
femme fatales. Anyone who likes realistic and gritty
adventure will take to PAST CRIMES, in which we learn about
everything from stealing luxury cars to scuba diving. Glen
Erik Hamilton writes an entertaining and fast paced story,
full of crimes, felons and old regrets. See if you can
catch the killer before Shaw does.
The Anthony, Macavity, and Strand Critics award-winning debut from Glen Erik Hamilton
When his estranged grandfather is shot and left for dead, an Army Ranger must plunge into the criminal underworld of his youth to find a murderer and uncover a shocking family secret in this atmospheric and evocative debut thriller.
Van Shaw was raised to be a thief, but at eighteen he suddenly broke all ties to that life and joined the military—abandoning his illicit past and the career-criminal grandfather who taught him the trade. Now, after ten years of silence, his grandfather has asked him to come home to Seattle. But when Van arrives, he discovers his grandfather bleeding out on the floor from a gunshot to the head. With a lifetime of tough history between him and the old man, Van knows he’s sure to be the main suspect.
The only way he can clear his name is to go back to the world he’d sworn to leave behind. Tapping into his criminal skills, he begins to hunt the shooter and uncover what drove his grandfather to reach out after so long. But in a violent, high-stakes world where right and wrong aren’t defined by the law, Van finds that the past is all too present . . . and that the secrets held by those closest to him are the deadliest of all.
Edgy and suspenseful, rich with emotional resonance, gritty action, and a deep-rooted sense of place, Past Crimes trumpets the arrival of a powerful talent in the mold of Dennis Lehane, Robert B. Parker, and John D. MacDonald.
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