What is this about?
Frank is at his roadhouse, with his granddaughter Allie, when a stranger, Maggie, comes in injured. Together with two other customers, Charlie and Delilah, Frank tries to help Maggie. She insists that no one calls the cops… and then the people hunting her come knocking on the door.
What else is this about?
Not a whole lot more than people hunting other people.
Blurb
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Frank is a service station owner on a little-used highway who just wants a quiet life. His granddaughter has been sent to stay with him to fix her attitude, but they don’t talk a lot.
When a badly injured young woman arrives at Frank’s service station with several cars in pursuit, Frank and a handful of unsuspecting customers are thrust into a life-or-death standoff.
But who are this group of men and women who will go to any lengths for revenge? And what do they want? Other than no survivors …?
A ferociously fast-paced, filmic, visceral, tense and utterly electric novel, unlike anything you’ve read before. Set on a lonely, deserted highway, deep in the Australian badlands, The Hunted is white-knuckle suspense matched to the fast-paced adrenaline of a Jack Reacher novel and the creeping menace of Wake in Fright. This is unmissable reading
Horror, action and violence meet each other in a remote service station in The Hunted.
When I posted about The Hunted as a Can’t Wait Wednesday pick, I genuinely did not expect this book.
Frank runs a service station in the middle of nowhere, comfortable in the solitude of this place he calls home. However when his estranged son asks him to take his granddaughter Allie for a bit, he agrees in an effort to extend some sort of olive branch to his son.
Allie however, is sullen and quiet, and they don’t exactly talk much. Until Maggie comes into the service station and collapses in front of them.
Together with Charlie and Delilah, two other customers travelling through the country, Frank takes her to his house and Charlie, a nurse, tries to help her.
That’s when the people hunting Maggie arrive
The Hunted is told in two timelines – past and present. The past timeline shows us just how Maggie came to be on the run from the people hunting her, and the present shows her and the others trying to survive being found. Maggie herself is steel – she knows how to fend for herself, knows how to manipulate others to get what she wants, and nothing will stop her from getting the information she needs from the hunters about her mother.
I think Frank is used to underestimating himself, but with Allie at risk he finds himself doing what he must to save Maggie and Allie. Charlie and Delilah are a young couple caught in the middle of something they want nothing to do with, but each steps up in their own way.
There’s not a lot to say about the characters, because they’re drawn in broad, clear strokes.
Two things make this book stand out: the author has an incredible sense of place, of the remoteness of Australia beyond the cities. You will feel alone, you will feel fear when the hunt begins.
The other is the action which is crisp and efficient (and bloody and explosive), with everything on the table (there’s one scene that reminded me of Silence of the Lambs, and I will never be able to unsee that image).
When I was reading this all I could think was that this was a smaller version of Mad Max, but more terrifying because this was no dystopian future — this is set in the present.
Oh my word! Yes… once you get away from civilisation, then it really is survival of the fittest, isn’t it? My history professor always used to say that civilisation is only a veneer and that as soon as it cracks, then it is always about might having the right. I’ve never forgotten his words.
Oh yes, I would say in light of this book, your history professor has it so right. But I appreciated to in this that might was underestimating everyone around them — but didn’t make them less creepy!
I enjoy when a story is told in both past and present, it always helps me getting a better feeling and understanding of facts and people, and boy this book sound terrifying . . . Is it bad that I like that? I mean, it seems like the author accomplished what a thriller/horror is supposed to do, and the image reminding you of Silence of the Lambs is already making me shiver . . . Great review, Verushka!
I think the author managed a good balance of story and characterisation versus action, AND a very healthy dose of terror. I was impressed with how the author managed to convey terror so well in and amongst the action.
I like the sound of this one. When an author has a genuine sense of place, it is easier to set the characters in the imagination. Characters who respond to the setting (time or place) become more believable. Of course, then there is the Mad Max, Silence of the Lambs association…which is definitely creepy.
You are so right — his writing does make it easier to imagine the characters in the situation and just really sucks you right in, even though you’re terrified of what is going to happen when you turn the page LOL!
Sounds very intense with the setting and the action and even Frank himself. I’m adding this one to my TBR list. 🙂
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I began reading it, but I got sucked right in.
It is a little scary knowing that all of this is taking place in the middle of nowhere!
VERY! And the author makes the whole setting jut come to life!