Review: "The Unwilling" by John Hart

“This subpar novel from bestseller Hart…explores the impact of the Vietnam War on a Southern family.” – Publishers Weekly
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The Unwilling is an overly busy and somewhat disappointing crime thriller from the talented John Hart. Jason French is a decorated Vietnam veteran dishonorably discharged from the Marine Corps when he was implicated in several suspicious deaths in Vietnam. Jason came home from the war addicted to heroin and spent two years in prison for drug-related violent crimes. After his release from prison in 1972, Jason returned to his hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, where his family is mourning the death of Jason’s twin brother, and anxious to keep Jason and his bad influence away from his younger brother, Gibby.
      Against his parents’ wishes, Gibby agrees to meet Jason at the lake for a relaxed day of fun, drinking, and older women. When a prison bus drives by, one of their female companions drunkenly provokes the convicts into a riot. A powerful and wealthy death row inmate, Prisoner X, orders the woman that inspired the riot murdered and Jason is placed squarely in the frame. With Jason back in jail, Gibby sets out to prove his older brother’s innocence, but when the second woman from the lake goes missing, the police suspect Gibby is involved, too.
      The Unwilling suffers from a conflict of identity. It begins as a family drama and coming-of-age story, then meanders into “high-concept” thriller territory, before settling into a routine procedural crime novel. The characters are more caricature than developed and the pacing, especially the first half, is pedestrian. The final climactic scenes, about the last quarter of the novel, generate enough suspense and surprise to provide an ending that is much better than the beginning, but that early clutter defuses The Unwilling’s fine conclusion.

The Unwilling was published as an e-book and hardcover by St. Martin’s Press in Feb. 2021. It is scheduled to be issued as a trade paperback in April 2022. Purchase The Unwilling at Amazon