Terminal: Brian Keene

Tommy O'Brien has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The doctor has given him one month to live and for a husband and father who's already behind on the bills, that's not good news. When he loses his job on top of everything else, a bad situation because downright desperate. In order to provide for his family once he's gone, Tommy plans a bank heist with his two best friends, John and Sherm. What should be a simple snatch and grab ends up spiraling in a maelstrom of chaos, and Tommy discovers even dying men have a lot left to lose.

Brian Keene deviates from his typical horror novels to weave a well-paced suspense novel with a supernatural undertone - a boy whose touch can heal - and has mixed results. While the idea is solid and not an unwelcome change of pace, it is a character-driven piece and the two supporting characters, John and Sherm, seem wooden at times, almost as though they are not fully fleshed out. Some of the mechanics of their conversations come off rather unnaturally, as if trying to enforce what the pecking order of their friendship is, resulting in uneven, almost stereotypical, interactions.

Not to say this was a bad read, but Keene's done better work than this. A dark and twisted final chapter keep this one from being easily forgettable and a few twists keep the last half of the book from getting too predictable or monotonous. Terminal won't win him any new readers and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody who's never read him before, but somebody who is already familiar with his work would get a fast, enjoyable read out of it.
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Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Spectra (May 31, 2005)
ISBN-10: 0553587382
ISBN-13: 978-0553587388