Sweet Vigilante

Jim Ody's pulpy revenge thriller Sweet Vigilante draws you into the dark underbelly of its story immediately as we are introduced to a little girl, Gina, who is been taken to some kind of boarding school or home in the country. As the story opens a deep sense of foreboding sets in as we find out that her mother has no love for the child and would rather give Gina up to complete strangers who she knows nothing about, whatever the outcome. As soon as we meet her foster family, there is a sense that something is off, and you are basically shouting at the page for the mother to come back and take the child away from this place.

Moving on to the story, we learn that Gina has taken up the mantle of a vigilante in order to protect others from the trauma that she has experienced and endured throughout her childhood.

Through alternating chapters that reach into Gina's past, we get to understand what shaped her and forced her into the choices that she makes. How she cannot trust the male of the species and how she struggles to form.

The story is a dark story and outlines how Gina was used, abused and abandoned. And whilst there is a lot of darkness in the book (such as sexual assault against children), Jim Ody treats the subject with sensitivity and compassion, and I never felt that this was exploitative.

Sweet Vengeance is a solid crime novel that has a number of things that I liked about it, not least Gina as a character. Whilst she is traumatised and sometimes makes decisions that are not wholly commendable, she is able to show love and empathy to those around her. As well as Gina, Sweet Vigilante is peppered with solid characters that add to the story.

There were times that I felt for me where the narrative missed its mark, particularly in the second act of the book when Gina takes in a child.In addition, there was an element to the story that I was not quite sure of its inclusion in the story, but I feel that these elements may be explored in later book. However, these were minor points and they did not spoil my enjoyment of the book as a whole.

In fact, in relation to the plot, I found it to have a decent pace and there were plenty of hooks in there to keep me reading and turning the pages at a fantastic rate to finish the book.

Whilst I guessed the nature of the main antagonist, and I think that this was done purposefully, I never actually saw the twist at the end and in no way predicted the culmination of the story.

Sweet Vigilante is a page turner of a book that maintains its pace throughout the story, and it finishes with a denouement that I definitely did not see coming.