Captured

by Neil Cross

Captured starts with Kenny discovering he has only weeks to live because of a brain tumour. He can feel his body betraying him and things accelerating so he decides he needs to do right by some people he feels he let down in his life. (A more serious My Name is Earl scenario, but in a thriller setting)

He writes a list of names including his ex-wife Mary, with whom he still has a good relationship , and who is very concerned about him, but who he can't bring himself to tell yet. There are two people from an incident he witnessed as a young man, and then there is Callie Barton, his best friend at school when he was small, odd and unpopular.

When he tries to track down Callie, he finds out she had disappeared a few years earlier and never been found. Her husband, although initially suspected by the police, has been cleared of wrong doing.

Kenny can't accept that the husband, Johnathon had nothing to do with it and decides to take matters into his own hands.

I couldn't put this novel down, it was the kind of book where you could see each bad decision spiral out of control and it wrenched you along towards what you knew was not going to be a happy ending. You know Kenny isn't going to get out of it alive, in fact you question how rational he is, especially when he's experiencing seizures and other brain symptoms. But boy, you feel for him, and in fact you feel for all of the characters.

It's not for the faint hearted, there's a lot of blood and violence, but it's a great read. Highly recommended.