Career criminal Longview Moody, on the run from killers, assumes his dead, twin brother’s identity as the new Chief of Police of a Texas town that’s being terrorized by a Mexican drug cartel. To pull off the deadly deception, Longview desperately works to become the kind of cop and man that his brother was. But when the two lives he’s living converge, he’s forced to embrace the violence within him to get justice…and vengeance.

IN A NUTSHELL
‘Dead Man’s Badge‘ is an excellent, full-on, action-packed, Southern Noir thriller, soaked in violence and powered by vengeance. It’s vivid, fresh and engaging.

I was already a fan of Robert Dunn’s books, but reading ‘The Sound Of Distant Engines’ or even the dark and violent Katrina Williams books hadn’t prepared me for ‘Dead Man’s Badge‘. 

It was an “I wanna stay up all night and finish this” kind of book, at least it was once I ditched the audiobook version and moved to the ebook. It grabbed me from the first scene, where our not-even-close-to-being-a-hero main character was being forced to dig his own grave in the desert.

The plot was clever and plausible. The story was propelled by a powerful current of violence and vengeance. The body count was high, trust was in short supply, and everyone had a hidden agenda. 

I came to, if not like then at least, admire our main character, Longview Moody. He was dangerous, disruptive, never thought ahead and never gave up. He had an unfortunate habit of seeing violence as the solution rather than the problem, but he was self-aware, far from stupid and was, in his own way, trying to do the right thing. Well, first trying to stay alive and then trying to do the right thing. 

I liked that Longview’s history with his family slowly came to the fore, shaping key elements of the story. I also liked that the Federal Agencies in the story were hard to distinguish from and were sometimes the same as the bad guys. This is consistently how Robert Dunn portrays the Feds, and it sounded plausible to me.

I don’t understand why this wasn’t at the top of the bestseller list. It’s better than most of the Reacher novels – just as much action and mystery but with better dialogue and well-grounded in the political realities of the United States’ Federal Agencies.  I think it would make a great TV series if HBO or Showtime picked it up.