Sydney “Syd” Livingstone thought leaving professional tennis behind would bring peace and be a bright, fresh start. Now she is enrolled as a cop in Ohio’s Walsh County Police Department. Syd is struggling to find her footing in a station that feels far from welcoming, and her new life as a rookie detective is anything but peaceful.
A shadowy vigilante known only as “The Enforcer” is wreaking havoc online and off. Operating through the dark web, “The Enforcer” has taken justice into their own hands—tracking down and murdering suspects who have been acquitted of murder in Walsh County. Their chilling posts feature real-time crime scene details and evidence that could only come directly from the police’s own files. Could the killer be one of their own? At the very least, “The Enforcer” must have inside access to the department.
Now two more targets have been named, and time is running out. Syd must navigate suspicion, corruption, and her own self-doubt to stop the next murder. But in a department where it seems no one is above suspicion, who can she trust?
Written by Orion Gregory, SERVES YOU RIGHT is a contemporary thriller that delivers some high-tension action and enough twists to satisfy mystery fans. Syd, who appeared in Gregory’s previous tennis-based thriller “Fault,” is convincingly drawn—bold, inquisitive, and initially deferential to the rules of her new job. As she finds her place, the narrative begins to build towards its satisfying conclusion.
Gregory has a way with bleak and graphic depictions of violence. The novel opens with a grim, determined murder where a husband strangles his wife. A few chapters later, another woman is killed as her “head cracked like someone took a hatchet to a frozen pond.” That these two clearly guilty murderers become the initial target of the retributive “Enforcer” could prompt many readers to hold out some sympathy for the actions of the novel’s villain. Gregory manages to switch the reader’s potential allegiance by presenting “The Enforcer” as a rather sinister, on-line vigilante, thoroughly entwined with an anonymous group called RealVigilante. He claims, unconvincingly, that he is “not a killer by nature” but someone who is set to mete out justice.
The taunting of the police by an unknown killer via cryptic messages whilst the body count rises will be familiar to readers of this genre. Indeed, the fledgling cop in the potentially corrupt police force is so generic as to verge on cliché. However, Gregory manages to keep the reader’s attention with well-paced plotting and realistic dialogue.
The writing is solid, too. In some ways, it’s a shame that—despite the punning title—the tennis element in Gregory’s debut has been largely, though not entirely, set aside. Syd’s fiancé is still active on the circuit, but apart from a few moments where she explicitly recalls her athletic past (such as when she “felt the prick of little needles running up her arms and legs, making her shiver,” a sensation that reminded her of the tension she’d felt on court when a match hung in the balance), tennis plays a minimal role. “I serve the community now, not tennis balls,” Syd says, but the book might have been more unique and memorable had Gregory found a way to allow her to do both.
With a heroine whose unusual tennis-themed backstory is mostly side-lined, the book is a slightly missed opportunity for the author to have served up something truly unique. That said, Gregory shows a talent to drive a compelling narrative, keeping enough twists in hand to have readers on their toes.
Orion Gregory’s SERVES YOU RIGHT is a competently delivered mystery thriller.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader