Some authors clearly have a lot of fun in naming their fictional characters, and here, Terry Wright is no exception. His eponymous hero has just been murdered, along with his daughter, Christy, and he's made a deal with the devil in order to save his daughter's soul - one hundred bad guys in return for her pardon... So here, Justin Graves name works on a number of levels. There's the obvious, jokey one, as in Just-in (the) Grave, and then there's the fact it sounds a lot like Justice too. But what's important here is the fact Justin is a believable, sympathetic character, wracked with guilt and frustrated longing to change things, the conflict and narrative tension are here from the start. In spades.
Justin Graves, an ex-Texas Ranger, has enough about him to support a series, and that's exactly what this is, the beginning of what promises to be a great, nailbiting series in which we can see the various bad guys get their comeuppance in a variety of ways, including, in this case, the titular drunk driver. There's more than a sniff of the Wild West about Graves, and Terry Wright draws him brilliantly. I understand there are a number of other stories available, and I for one will be reading them. Wright's prose is precise, ballsy and at times, brutal, but it is his characters, and the situations he lands them in which really make this a series to watch. Excellent.
