OK, maybe David and his delightful family and staff laid a promising framework with the great accommodations and fabulous food at their Charleston Inn in Hendersonville NC. But books are a serious thing and he doesn’t know I bought a copy (until now). I was planning to take it home and give it a try but I soon found myself sneaking in a chapter here and there as our companions’ rest schedule permitted, and a satisfying finish was reached before the trip ended. The author strives somewhat for the John Grisham style, although he comes at it from the opposite end of the spectrum, and there is a bit of the first-novel tendency to use the dialog to preach instead of letting the action reveal the intended message (which in this case it would have done anyway – I knew where the story was going long before the speeches came in). This applies also to the key relationship which simply happens, so fast as to be jarringly improbable. Those minor carps aside, as I said from the start, once you get into it you will have a hard time putting it down, and that is criterion number one for a thriller-type book.
Payne, David R., “Just Punishment“, Page Publishing, 2016.