And now we come to the end...

Title: Iron House

Author: John Hart

Progress: 100% Done!

Platform: Kindle

Amazon Rating: four out of five stars

Book 1 out of 107

Here we are, at the the end of Iron House, book one of 107.

Remember how in my last post I wondered if there would be one more epic, soap opera-esque twist?

There was! I'll say this one more time...SPOILER ALERT!

The final big revelation, taken right out of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes back, is that the crazy old hillbilly woman with the gamey leg and a filthy mouth is actually the mother of Michael (super assassin) and Julian (the weaker, more gentle, artistic, and crazy younger brother) AND, get this, Abigail (the adopted mother of Julian and almost adopted mother of Michael).


Let me try to put it more simply. The mother is actually the sister of the two brothers, one of whom was adopted by her when he was a child, making her his mother and sister. I said "more simply," not "simply," which might be impossible.


Abigail also turns out to be the murderer of all those people being pulled up from the bottom of the family lake. Well, not Abigail, but her evil alter ego, her hidden personality, Serena Slaughter, who was created when poor Abigail, as a ten year old, was forced to drown her first little brother in an icy lake because her mother didn't care for boys and seems to be evil to her very core.


These revelations come out in some big, entertaining scenes. You can almost hear the dramatic music in the background, heavy on the trombones and cellos...BUM-BUM-BUUUUUM... after each revelation.


Then Mr. Hart eases us into a pleasant coda full of the siblings walking on the beach, drinking wine, and getting to know each other.


He transitions nicely from there to five months later where Michael is in Spain, where he spends his days drinking coffee and waiting for his cell phone to ring, waiting for Elena (who hasn't been heard from since she flew away 10 chapters ago) to call ... and finally ... I won't give it it away, but it was nicely handled.


Now that I'm all done with Iron House, it strikes me how over-the-top happy the ending is. Michael gets $80 million or so. Abigail gets several million. Julian gets to go back to being a successful author.


The bad guys are all dead, but are the good guys so good they deserve all that treasure? 


Michael, in his lifetime, has killed dozens of people, and maybe they all deserved it, but does he get to decide that? Is he really so innocent?


Abigail might be crazy, but just because her other personality did all her killing, does that mean she can go free with no price to pay for all those bodies at the bottom of the lake?


In John Grisham books, the good guy never gets to keep the money. They sometimes come close, but in the end, they are glad to escape with their lives, their loved ones, and a few life lessons. The money they had been chasing evaporates because it wasn't earned honestly. That moral balancing in Grisham stories is a big part of his appeal, and a big part of the appeal of this genre.


Crime thrillers put their heroes in horrific situations filled with dangers and pains that most humans will never know. But we watch the news; we know bad things happen, that nightmares do come to life. We live in fear of those things happening to us. 


Stories can relieve that fear; they can take us to the dark place where it lives, give us a brief tour of the terrors that exist there and then show us a brightly lit exit, telling us that things will be okay, the good guys will eventually win, the case will be solved, and the bad will be punished. 


Mr. Grisham seems to also say that the good guys won't escape punishment either, if they don't play by the rules. Mr. Hart, he seems to be saying that if you kill the right kinds of people, or you don't seem to be aware that you have an evil alternative split personalty with a homicidal streak, you just might get that pot of gold. 


The ending of Iron House is indeed satisfying, even a little moving. But did it make me think at all? Did it get under my skin? Did it make me question my moral compass the way some of Mr. Grisham's novels have?


Nope. But that's okay. Maybe next time. I'm hoping to see Michael again in a future novel. 


Thanks to Mr. Hart for a good book. Looking forward to the next one.


And now, on to the next one...