Book Review: Terminal Black, Relic Black, Book 1, Colin Garrow
Thriller/Mystery: Terminal Black, Relic Black, Book 1, Colin Garrow
Blog Tour June 28, 2023
With a name like “Relic Black,” you might be predestined to some kind of greatness. The hero of a story.
An “Indiana Jones” like figure, discovering ancient and lost cities and fighting ruthless graverobbers. Or,
maybe a spy, risking life and spurning love to protect your country from her enemies.
Or, I suppose, you just might be a ne’er-do-well thief living near poverty and operating under the
guidance and threat of more cutthroat criminals.
Relic Black has been charged with stealing the identity of a man. What he doesn’t know is that this man
is being hunted by a hitman. So when Black succeeds, he manages to turn the attention of the hitman to
himself. Soon, Black finds himself fleeing from the hitman, fleeing from the man who stole his identity,
fleeing from some other players who get revealed during the course of the novel, and fleeing from his
girlfriend.
Well, he isn’t actually fleeing from his girlfriend. But he should, because she is royally upset with one
Relic Black.
Colin Garrow is a writer I have come to enjoy. He seems to specialize in quirky characters who are not
always on the right side of right and wrong, who are barely scraping by, and who find themselves in
difficulties that are not entirely of their own making (although sometimes they are led in those directions
by the choices they have made). Relic Black fits this mold. His moral compass is not aligned properly.
His sense of self-preservation is very strong in the abstract–but when a situation arises he relies on an
instinct that invariably leads him into danger. He is resourceful and quick–believe me, there are off-label
uses for a toothbrush that I never imagined. At the end of the day, though, he is usually in more trouble
with less control over his life and less money in his pocket. And a thoroughly upset girlfriend.
Terminal Black is not my favorite read by Colin Garrow. But it is a fun book with lots of twists and turns,
a convoluted story about a chronically messed up man who is just trying to make a dishonest buck here
and there.
Our thanks to Rachel Gilbey of Rachel’s Random Resources for our copy of the novel Terminal Black,
provided so we could write an honest review for this blog tour. The opinions here are those of Scintilla.
For other perspectives, check out the other bloggers on this tour.
Book Review: Terminal Black, Relic Black, Book 1, Colin Garrow