Killer Choice by Tom Hunt
Berkley/Penguin Random House, $26.00, 342 pages, ISBN 978-0-399-58640-8
A harrowing ride into desperation, is how one commentator described this chilling suspense novel by a debut author who posits the following question: How far would you go to save the life of the person you love most in the world? That is what faces protagonist Gary Foster in this devilishly-twisted plot that puts an ordinary man into an impossible situation.
Killer Choice, by Tom Hunt, takes place in the heart of the Michigan rust belt. In a city with no industry, no jobs and no hope, Gary and Beth Foster’s lives are looking up. He’s opened a new retail store with his brother Rod, and Beth has finally been able to conceive after years of trying. They are expecting a son in a few months and are overjoyed by the prospect of finally starting a family. Then comes the phone call no one ever wants to get, Beth has collapsed. She’s been rushed to a local hospital, unconscious and convulsing. She has a brain tumor, cancerous . . . inoperable. The only hope for the devastated couple and their unborn child is an experimental treatment that’s only available in Germany. The cost: $200,000, is way beyond their modest, middle-class means. Desperate, they try raising the cash through appeals to friends and a go-fund-me page on the internet. Weeks later and with time running out, they’ve only managed to come up with a fraction of what they need. Exhausted, afraid and running out of hope, Gary gets a mysterious phone call and an astonishing offer. A stranger offers put up Gary the two-hundred grand he’s been despairing for . . . with just one little hitch . . . in return he’ll have to kill someone. To Gary, who’s never even held a gun, much less fired one, it’s an impossible dilemma. Can he go against every moral precept he’s ever had, to commit a heinous crime in order to try and save his beloved wife? What would you do in his place? Read the book and find the answers in this nail-biter of domestic suspense.