Terminal
By Brian Keene
Bantam Books, 2005
Reviewed by William I. Lengeman III
(First published in Apex Digest)

Reviewing books someone else has chosen can sometimes be a bit of a crapshoot. There are times when it becomes a regular chore just to slog on through to the end of a book so that you can write a reasonably informed review.

Which is why it’s so refreshing to run across a novel like Brian Keene’s Terminal. To call it a real page-turner would be an unforgivable lapse into cliché, but for me at least, that’s exactly what it was. Had I had sufficient time or if I were a speedier reader, I could probably have careened through this one in one sitting.

Keene is probably best known for his zombie epics, The Rising and City of the Dead. His work seems to be turning up everywhere nowadays and he’s already reached that watermark in the aspiring horror writer’s career where’s being ballyhooed as “the next Stephen King.” That “next Stephen King” list has gotta be pretty lengthy by now, but I digress.

This is the first Keene novel I’ve read, but based on comments he made in a recent interview and simply by using my powers of deduction, it’s safe to assume that it’s a departure from his zombie books. It would be a real stretch, as a matter of fact, to even try to call this one horror. The horrific content therein is pretty much drawn from real life and what little bit of supernatural content there is doesn’t crop up until later in the work.

It’s probably no big spoiler to reveal that Terminal is the story of a guy - Tommy O’Brien - who has just found out he has cancer and is only good for another month or so. Tommy is a working class stiff from a working class town. He toils in a foundry and his wife Michelle labors in a convenience store. They’re just barely scraping by and most of the time they aren’t even doing that well.

So when Tommy gets hit with the double whammy of a terminal disease and losing his job, his first thought is to make sure Michelle and his young son T.J. are taken care of after he shuffles forth from the old mortal coil.

His solution, and not such a terribly farfetched one, given his circumstances, is to rob a bank. When they find out about this venture, Tommy’s buddies John and Sherm, who have also been laid off, decide to pitch in and help. John is something of a dimwit, but is still one of Tommy’s closest friends. Tommy hasn’t known Sherm for nearly so long and thus he is something of an unknown quantity, a fact that becomes important as the trio undertake the bank job and find things unraveling in a relatively spectacular manner.

Now, just when you go and figure that this is going to be a fairly straightforward crime novel, Keene tosses in a nifty little twist. To dole out any specifics would be spoiling things, so I’m not going to go there.

Keene hits a few false notes along the way - a scene with his protagonist in church and some of the conversations between the bank robbers and hostages are some of the more notable misfires - but overall Terminal is well worth your $6.99 and the minimal amount of time you’ll invest in riffling through it.

Copyright 2007 – William I. Lengeman III