Welcome to Mysteries to Die For and this Toe Tag.
I am TG Wolff and am here with Jack, my piano player and producer. This is normally a podcast where we combine storytelling with original music to put you at the heart of mystery, murder, and mayhem. Today is a bonus episode we call a Toe Tag. It is the first chapter from a fresh release in the mystery, crime, and thriller genre.
Today’s featured release is Hero Haters by Ken MacQueen
The Hero Haters was released in 2022 from The Wild Rose Press and is available from AMAZON and other book retailers.
About Ken MacQueen
Before turning to fiction, Ken MacQueen spent 15 years as Vancouver bureau chief for Maclean’s, Canada’s newsmagazine, winning multiple National Magazine Awards and nominations. He traveled the world writing features and breaking news for the magazine, and previously for two national news agencies. Naturally, he had to make Jake Ockham, his hero, a reporter, albeit a reluctant one. MacQueen also covered nine Olympic Games and drew Jake’s athletic prowess from tracking elite rowers in training and on podiums in Athens, Beijing and London. He and his wife divide their time between Vancouver, and British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast.
TG Wolff Review
Hero Haters is a thriller. There’s a little bit of hero in all of us, but for some of us, our hero has risen to the test. Stopping a shooter in a school. Pulling a man out of a burning car. Rescuing a child from a well. In Ken MacQueen’s world, ordinary people putting others' lives ahead of their own are honored with an award for exceptional heroism with the Sedgewick Sacrifice Medal. Quietly, one by one, the recipients are disappearing, recipients vetted by one man: Jake Ockham. As the storm of hatred and disillusion swirls, Jake is again called to the most sublime act of setting others before himself.
Bottom line: Hero Haters is for you if you like high tension thrillers driven by twisted logic and determined heroes.
Strengths of the story: Hero Haters masterfully stimulates the readers feelings of urgency, angst, and “oh, shit, no.” This is one book where once you start, either you won’t put it down or you’ll put it down fast because you can’t take the intensity. The characters, good and bad, are well developed and feel like real people. The story line is truly well thought out. Ken MacQueen had to do a lot of plotting about what happened to these characters years before the story starts in order for it to be this flawless. The story moves distinctly between Washington State and Western Pennsylvania, making it easy to follow what is happening in the two locations.
Where the story fell short of ideal: This one doesn’t, which is unusual for me with thrillers. Usually I get to the end, look back at the story and find all kinds of contrived scenarios, plot holes, and inconsistencies between character motives and actions. That is not the case with Hero Haters. If I have to pick something as weak, I will say I had some trouble keeping the timeline straight at the start of the book. I didn’t realize this until I was about ⅔ way through and while surprising me, didn’t detract from the story.
