Last summer I went to the Printer's Row Book Festival in Chicago, and one of the tents/booths I visited was the Echelon Press booth. Now I don't know much about Echelon, but they had a lot of books there, and some looked okay. I met an author named Marc Vun Kannon, who was sort of working at the booth on behalf of his own bookstore, and who writes fantasy novels. I bought one of his books and told him that I liked mysteries a lot. He pointed out a couple that he said were good. I recall that the first I picked up didn't intrigue me at all. But the second sounded good. It was a book called OUT COLD by Tom Schreck.

It sounded interesting. His main character, a fellow named Duffy Dumbrowski, was an odd mixture of psychologist/social worker and amateur boxer. And the book was described as having to do with a terrorist plot. Somehow this was going to tie in with Bassett Hound rescue. I didn't see how, but was intrigued enough to buy the book.

So I came away with two books from that booth. I read Vun Kannon's fantasy right away, since I had met him and thought he was a pretty nice guy. His fantasy was inventive and interesting, but I guess I'm more of an "urban fantasy' guy, enjoying Jim Butcher and Tim Pratt fantasy novels more. As much as I like Lord Of The Rings I'm just not that high on most sword and sorcery type stuff.

I put the Schreck book aside and sorta forgot about it, until recently when I was looking for a new book to read and came upon it. I thought, why not? Let's try this one.

It was pretty good! I wondered how the main character would play out, with the odd juxtaposition of vocation and avocation. I wondered how the dog rescue thing would fit into a story about terrorism. And it wasn't totally seamless, but it wasn't too forced either.

In this book, Duffy is talking to one of his clients, an ex-Special Forces guy who is now quite crazy. And the guy keeps getting beat up, but the things he's raving about seem to be coming true around the country. Duffy is intrigued. He is also suffering from two blows to the head while sparring, and probably has some sort of concussion, so his own judgement on the issue is a bit suspect, even by himself.

But when he finally gets the rest of his client's story, he finds out some things that suggest that maybe he knows something more than anyone's giving him credit for. And the next thing he's predicting is some sort of Columbine-like situation at a high school - quite possibly a high school in their vicinity.

If you really want to know how the dog stuff fits in, I can tell you in the comments. As I said, a bit forced into the story, but it more or less worked.

The editing in this story is a bit suspect. This is the third Echelon Press book I've read and I think all of them have been the same. They're all fairly competently written but could use some editing, especially on the ebb and flow of the plot as it lays itself out. I don't know why this is.

But I have to say that I liked this book enough to explore more books, probably on Kindle, by Mr. Schreck.