Red Hands by Christopher Golden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

**3.5-stars rounded up**

In Jericho Falls, New Hampshire, Maeve Sinclair is busy soaking up the warm atmosphere of the local 4th of July parade, when the unthinkable happens.

A rogue car plows through the crowd, taking out several people. As if that wasn’t bad enough, when the driver stumbles out, he continues killing people with his hands!

Not by strangling, or stabbing, or anything like that. He simply touches them and they fall dead.

Maeve has to do something, she attacks the man, but unfortunately through some form of contact with him, she gets what he has: Red Hands, the touch of death.

Maeve can immediately tell something is wrong. She can feel it. She has been contaminated.

Before she can come into contact with anyone, and potentially harm them, Maeve flees into the mountains bordering town.

Ben Walker, weird science expert, is preparing to enjoy the 4th of July holiday with his son.

Unfortunately, before they can set off on their camping trip, Ben receives a call for help from Alena Boudreau, head of the Global Science Research Coalition.

She tells him that a devastating bioweapon has been released from a New Hampshire laboratory, killing patient zero, and leaving one infected woman on the loose.

Ben’s assignment is to go to New Hampshire and get Maeve Sinclair off the mountain and into custody before anyone else does.

Meanwhile, Maeve’s family is anxious to get her back home. They don’t understand completely what has happened to her, but as witnesses to the parade massacre, they know that she’s in trouble.

Ted, Maeve’s father, injured and struggling with his addiction is having a hard time coping. In spite of this, he does assist local authorities in their hunt for Maeve.

Maeve’s sister, Rose, along with her girlfriend, Priya, also head out to search the mountain. Rose feels she knows her sister well enough to guess where she would go to hide.

Ted’s best friend, Rue, a biologist, also gets involved, by heading to the Laboratory to find some answers.

Once Ben Walker hits town, he joins up with the family and the hunt begins in earnest.

I had a lot of fun reading this book, but it is not the type of book that I would generally pick up. However, with this being said, I’m really glad that I did.

This action-packed novel grabbed me right from the very start. It is interesting as heck.

The entire idea behind it had me enthralled. I enjoyed all of the characters and although it started to go a little off the rails towards the end, it was no less compelling.

With shadow organizations, corrupt corporations and questionable government officials, this story certainly had a lot of baddies. All out to get our intrepid hero, Ben Walker, as he struggles to save the little guy.

Along the way, the mystery of the death touch begins to reveal itself. It was hella strange, but I was into it, nonetheless.

I really liked this. I am thinking about picking up the other two earlier books in this series.

The cases Ben worked on in those books were alluded to here, not in a spoilery way, but definitely in a way that made me want to go back and check them out.

Thank you so much to the publisher, St. Martin’s Press, for providing me with a copy of this to read and review.

I certainly appreciate it!

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