The Hills Be Shaken

Michael Stewart — 2022

"The mountains fall away, and THE HILLS BE SHAKEN . . ." -Isaiah 54:10 Mose Haley was an engineer, but in a few short months, he will have his FBI badge . . . and his revenge. Two weeks ago, Mose was designing highway curves that safely carry minivans loaded with three kids and a dog doing 70 miles per hour. Now he is standing next to hot ammunition casings holding a standard issue Glock 23 handgun with the slide locked back and the barrel smoking. Two weeks ago-before the people he loved died-was a lifetime ago. The attack on Manhattan, Kansas, dubbed Little 9/11 was the first. Officer Sam McGuire was there when it happened, shaken like everyone else on that day. The day he witnessed the collapse of a two-mile dam. Also, the day Sam saw the blonde in the park. The fit woman, jogging with an AR-15 and a pistol. He has questioned her and questioned her again. He has gone to ground zero and rummaged through the debris. Sam is a good cop, but he cannot piece it all together. He needs help. He needs an engineer. Mose wants to believe he has the grit for the job, but he is a rookie. He has never had to face rooftop gunfire or defuse a bomb in a playground with sweaty hands and a paperclip. Mose Haley has never been tested . . . until now.

Reviews

C. J. Daley @cjdscurrentread

May 13, 2023

I picked this up off of NetGalley and then the author doubled down and offered me the audio too! I went with the narration by Eric Baker for the sake of time, and he did a good job. Right off the bat, I love a concise and simple cover, but I do wish this one had a little more along the lines of something plot/setting specific. This is a multi-POV crime novel with mystery, betrayal, and a lot of twists and turns. New FBI agents work with their new division to investigate possible terrorist works involving American infrastructure. Slow works in hopes of making a coordinated attack in the future. Starting with a dam’s destruction that could be natural or sinister. Something just doesn’t feel right. This was fast paced and enjoyable. I did feel like there were some issues with setting, where I didn’t know where the character was, or if I did, it wasn’t described enough. But with it being FBI and countrywide, they were in a lot of places. Also, the dam incident went on to be called ‘Little 9/11,’ and personally that just didn’t sit well with me as the name overall. Personally a 3/5*.