Ray's Reviews: Double Tap by Peter McGarvey

If you’re looking for bizarre, adrenaline-charged entertainment, “Double Tap”, by Canadian author Peter McGarvey (Cliff House Publishing, $14.95) should certainly be on your reading list.


It is likely to have specialized appeal however, as the entertaining crime novel has many deadly scenes of violence and sexual overtones.


More than half of the characters end up as corpses in a variety of often-gruesome murder scenes – untraceable to the main characters Rip Hunter and his sidekick Wilma.


Operating as expensive contract killers out of Detroit, the deadly duo are quite successful, relying exclusively on recommendations from their many satisfied customers.


This well-researched trade paperback is laced with dark humor, focusing on the incredible and sometimes improbable lengths the psychopaths will go to get information.


Against his better judgment, Rip takes on an unusual assignment – track down the killers of a prominent Senator for the Senator’s daughter.


It’s odd because he already knows the answer – Rip and Wilma did the unsolved crime three years earlier; they have to dig much deeper to discover the source of the money given to the person who hired them.


Their crime-laden journey gets them into many hectic confrontations, including deadly action with mobsters, renegade bikers, crooked cops, a nasty prison guard, a satanic cult, sadistic reclusive billionaires, hungry alligators and much, much more.


Intriguing characters abound, including a clever therapist, power-driven inmates, assorted geniuses, other successful hitmen and a pretty drug-smuggler.


The action doesn’t take place only in Detroit; the blood-spattered tale begins in Switzerland and moves around the country with conflict in a Michigan prison, a whiteout snowstorm in Buffalo NY and a Class Four hurricane in Charleston SC.


Just when you think “What else can possibly go wrong?” something does – their use of a truth serum and a drone gets unexpected, often surprising results.


While the characters names are occasionally annoying, the carefully-concocted, convoluted plot has an ending that’s impossible to predict.


This is the second book in a series, following “Hair-Trigger”, where Rip and Wilma break their own rules and get into lots of trouble.


McGarvey is also the author of two books in the Molly Parsons series, “Dark Sunset” and “Bloody Sunset” starring a Michigan small-town police officer with a haunted past.


More information is available at www.petermcgarvey.com.

        Ray Walsh, owner of East Lansing’s Curious Book Shop, has reviewed crime

novels and Michigan books regularly since 1987.

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This review was originally published by the Lansing State Journal on July 3, 2016.