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    The Contractors
    The Contractors
    The Contractors
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Contractors

    Written by Harry Hunsicker

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Private military contractors. They’re not just for foreign wars anymore. Jon Cantrell, a disgraced ex-cop, works for one such company. He's a DEA agent paid on a commission basis, patrolling one of the busiest drug-hubs in the country: Dallas, Texas.

    When Cantrell and his partner and sometimes lover confiscate the wrong shipment of drugs, they find themselves in possession of a star witness in an upcoming cartel trial that could destroy the largest criminal organization in the hemisphere.

    To turn a profit, all they have to do is safely deliver the witness to the US Attorney on the other side of the state. An easy trip, except the witness doesn’t want to go and a group of competing DEA contractors and a corrupt Dallas police officer want everybody involved dead.

    This heart-stopping thriller takes readers deep into a strange underworld where the lines between government officials and mercenaries blur. In this complex network of drug traffickers, cartels, politicians, and police, no one's hands are clean.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateMar 18, 2014
    ISBN9781480557963
    The Contractors
    Author

    Harry Hunsicker

    Harry Hunsicker is the former executive vice president of the Mystery Writers of America and the author of seven crime thrillers, including The Devil’s Country, the first Arlo Baines novel, and the Jon Cantrell and Lee Henry Oswald series. His work has been short-listed for both the Shamus and Thriller Awards. Hunsicker’s story “West of Nowhere,” originally published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, was selected for inclusion in the anthology The Best American Mystery Stories 2011. For more about Harry, visit him at www.harryhunsicker.com.

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    Reviews for The Contractors

    3.5/5

    13 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5

      Synopsis/blurb……




      Private military contractors. They're not just for foreign wars anymore. Jon Cantrell, a disgraced ex-cop, works for one such company. He's a DEA agent paid on a commission basis, patrolling one of the busiest drug-hubs in the country: Dallas, Texas.

      When Cantrell and his partner and sometimes lover confiscate the wrong shipment of drugs, they find themselves in possession of a star witness in an upcoming cartel trial that could destroy the largest criminal organization in the hemisphere.

      To turn a profit, all they have to do is safely deliver the witness to the US Attorney on the other side of the state. An easy trip, except the witness doesn’t want to go and a group of competing DEA contractors and a corrupt Dallas police officer want everybody involved dead.

      This heart-stopping thriller takes readers deep into a strange underworld where the lines between government officials and mercenaries blur. In this complex network of drug traffickers, cartels, politicians, and police, no one's hands are clean.

      ---------------------------------------------------------
      My take........


      Another new author and another Net Galley book which on the face of it…… drugs, corruption, dirty cops, Mexican cartels and hit squads…..ought to have been up my street. Whilst it was enjoyable up to a point I wasn't engaged in the outcome and felt somewhat indifferent as to how things played out.




      The author provides a decent back story for our main character and puts flesh on his bones ….. a troubled job history, family difficulties with an unstable half-sister looking after his father who is suffering from dementia, on/off romance with an equally troubled partner, Piper……but I just didn't feel any connection or empathy towards Cantrell and less for Piper, the other main figure on the side of the good guys.




      Cantrell and Piper take down a drug shipment. Cantrell and Piper find themselves in possession of a witness in an up and coming trial against a top figure in one the Mexican drug cartels. Cantrell and Piper endeavour to deliver her to a US attorney somewhere else in Texas and in return secure themselves a big pay-day. A road-trip ensues, with numerous encounters and a fair bit of blood-letting as a variety of miscreants on both sides of the law try to stop the pair and silence the witness permanently.




      Gun fights, death, betrayal, secrets, corruption, drug-addiction, tech-wizardry, family, Texas, Mexican hit squads, indifference, constant mind-wandering, page-counting, loss of reading momentum, ennui, swimming through treacle…… the end, joy, relief, a burden lifted.




      I’m possibly being a little bit unfair to the author as the plot was ok, the characters were more than caricatures and the setting was well-described……..I just wasn't swept along – when I read a 500 page book, I want it to be epic and in my opinion this fell some way short. Maybe 200 pages less and it would have been more.



      Better than a 2 – as I didn't contemplate stabbing myself in the eyeballs with a pen at any point, but only marginally. In the spirit of generosity a 3 then.




      3 from 5




      Hunsicker has previously written 3 other books in a series with a protagonist named Lee Henry Oswald set in Dallas! The first of these – Still River was nominated for a Shamus Award back in 2005. Whilst this one wasn't to my taste, I think I would be prepared to give this first book a read.





      My copy was accessed via Net Galley website. The Contractors was published in February, 2014.



    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book! The author has a wonderful way of describing things - his similes and metaphors are awesome! This book is non-stop action - from the first page to the last. It definitely held my interest - I didn't want to stop reading! The story is about Jon and his partner/lover, Piper, who are both contract DEA agents. They inadvertently get into a mess of trouble with the Mexican drug cartels, the Dallas police, and other contractors. They then have to spend the rest of the book trying to get out of trouble. I was lucky enough to win this book as a Goodreads Firtreads giveaway.
    • 4/5
      Jon Cantrell is a DEA agent, or mostly one. He works for a contracting agency to the DEA. His badge is real, his authority is real. However, he gets paid on commission. The big commissions come from big busts, and the biggest are drugs. Getting a percent of the value of a large shipment of cocaine can be a years salary or better. Some agents double the take home pay by working on both sides of the fence. Each contracting firm bids and gets a region to work, and given how ‘well’ the US agencies cooperate right now, imagine what would happen if each agency was broken up and given to private companies that are competing? A lot more people impeding the flow of information in order to better position themselves.Jon and his partner Piper are broken people just trying to get by. When the legitimate jobs (busting bad guys for the DEA) are scarce, they occasionally take on the not so legitimate jobs. We meet them on one of these. The job they accepted was to find a girl, a man’s niece, who was being detained in a brothel and retrieve her. They don’t really care about the brothel, nor the other girls/women who are there, only the one they agreed to retrieve, and they aren’t afraid to use a little violence to smooth the way.Jon and Piper have a line on a very large shipment of illegal drugs coming in and their cut would be large enough to fix many of their current financial problems maybe for a couple years. Little do they know they are pawns in a much larger and more dangerous game. When they find the drugs, they also find a kidnapped woman. This woman is more important to everyone than the drugs. After securing the area the first people to show up are a couple more drug thugs, closely followed by some dirty DEA contractors and things for Jon and Piper just continue to go downhill from there. Now lots of people want Jon, Piper and the witness dead.Overall, it was a very fast-paced book with non-stop action. The characters were fairly believable (other than the witness) and for a ‘Die Hard’ kind of storyline pretty good. It certainly kept my attention and I flew right through the book, this almost got it a 4 star rating. However, after thinking about different aspects of the plot, I bumped half a star off, just a few too many holes I didn’t like.