Book Review: The Hunt by Tim Lebbon

Escape and they’ll kill your family. The cruellest game. The highest stakes. Only she can bring his family back alive …Rose is the one that got away. She was the prey in a human trophy hunt organised by an elite secret organisation for super-rich clients seeking a unique thrill. She paid a terrible price. Every moment since she has been planning her revenge … And now her day has come.

Chris returns from his morning run to find his wife and children missing and a stranger in his kitchen. He’s told to run. If he’s caught and killed, his family go free. If he escapes, they die. Rose is the only one who can help him, but Rose only has her sights on one conclusion. For her, Chris is bait. But The Trail have not forgotten the woman who tried to outwit them. The Trail want Rose. The hunters want Chris’s corpse. Rose wants revenge, and Chris just wants his family back.

The hunt is on …

My Review: 
Chris goes jogging every morning to set himself up for the day, always making sure that he is back before the kids head out to school. After setting a new personal best he comes home ready for a coffee and a brief bit of family time but when he opens the door he is greeted with silence. He finds blood and a ripped shower curtain and then he finds a stranger drinking his coffee and telling him that they have his family and they will be executed if he calls the police. Chris is left to stew over what he has been told and goes through an agony of testing out these rules which results in proof that they do have his family and they have people with his other extended family members and friends, meaning nobody can help him. Until Rose breaks in.

Rose was chosen for the sick game set up by The Trail, who kidnap ordinary people for their game and force them to play by holding their family hostage. Then their rich clients get a chance to hunt down this human prey in a carefully controlled environment. In her case she was too smart for her hunters and managed to shake them off her trail. The hunt was then called off and her family executed. But The Trail have never forgotten that Rose escaped them and they are looking for her again. Rose sank into a pit of despair before managing to pull herself together to plot revenge. She has been watching and waiting, spying on The Trail and makes her move when she finds out that a new runner has been chosen. Now she sees a chance for revenge. With Chris distracting the hunters, Rose can close in on the people who killed her family, if they don't get to her first.

Rose changes the rules of the game. She knows that Chris has speed and endurance, so she drops him off in the hills of Snowdonia where he has a better chance of survival. She instructs him to not get too far ahead or he risks the hunt being called off and losing his family. Chris has no choice but to be bait for both the hunters and Rose to play their games but all he can do is ensure the hunt goes on as long as possible. But The Trail have their own games too, setting Chris up for the murder of the Trail members killed by Rose so that his face is right across the news. Anyone he encounters in the mountains could place a call to the police and doom his family. Chris himself is under stress to stay in sight of the hunters without allowing them to take him down so he can save his family.

This was a bit different from my usual reads as I don't read a lot of thrillers. We follow both Chris and the hunt, seeing what he is doing and how the actual hunt is going. I really enjoyed seeing an ordinary man in this situation, trying to make the best decisions and sometimes getting it badly wrong because he doesn't know the area that well. I liked the parts of the book that followed Chris the best as I enjoy extreme survival stories. Having the details of the hunt and Chris running for his life in the mountain and lake environment appealed to me and I loved these parts of the story. We also see what is happening to his family from inside the head of his daughter Gemma, who is trying to plot a way to escape her captors. Gemma is without doubt the strongest of the women in her family and I liked that she was determined not to give up and try to save her family.

We also see two timelines with Rose. The first is what she is doing in the present to kill the members of The Trail, and the second goes back to how she went from drunken wreck to a trained killer ready to get back into the hunt. While it was interesting to see Rose in real time, I wasn't really that bothered about her flashbacks, but I admit it was important to the story. Rose is lurking in the hills watching the hunters and looking for the helicopter that The Trail use to monitor the hunt. Circumstances allow her to start luring her targets but she is not always as smart as she seems and she makes mistakes. I liked that, because it reminds us that although she was trained, she is still a normal person underneath and mistakes will happen. I enjoyed her parts in the hunt and she did grow on me more as the book progressed. 

I also found The Trail a good choice for the bad guys. They really are sick and twisted to want to destroy families for their own financial gain. We see certain members of The Trail like Grin, who is a really evil bitch of a character, especially in the way she treats the captives. I just wanted Rose to get her hands on this one. I also found it interesting to find out a bit more about the hunter clients. Why do bored rich men with families they love decide they want to liven up their lives by hunting down humans? Rose and Chris have interesting interactions with these hunters and what we find out is pretty fascinating.

The niggles I had were minor and none have affected my rating of the book. The lack of trust and cooperation between Chris and Rose is realistic though frustrating. Rose sees Chris as bait and a catch to avenge her family and he knows that his family are not her priority as long as she can kill Trail members. What bugged me a bit was the way that Chris had no trust that she was not part of the game too and was deliberatly leading him astray. Chris mate, she killed the men at your house, changed the location of the hunt to something that suits you better, gives you supplies, and alerts you to changes in the hunt. You have to believe in her motives at least a bit! But Rose does withhold information from him and isn't keen to really help and he senses that. Her mission is revenge first and if Chris and his family die, it doesn't matter as long as she wins her own game. She isn't the nicest person but that is what the Trail created when they killed her family. I can't say that I liked her but her story was interesting.

This was a good solid thriller and I did enjoy it, especially that exposed mountain survival. There was enough death in it to keep this horror fan happy and a good level of tension goes through the book. The pacing was even with no huge dull bits as everything was relevant to the plot. Overall it was a good solid read and I enjoyed it.

Read October 2019
3 stars.