The focus of my blog is to review book series and not individual novels. But writers are going to continue writing novels within a series even after I have done my review, so I plan on reviewing the individual novels as they come into circulation.   Denison Hatch has just recently added book #2, Never Go Alone to the Jake Rivett series.

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In my review of indie author Denison Hatch’s first book within the Jake Rivett series, Flash Crash, I complained that NYPD police officer Jake Rivett was a bully and nobody likes bullies. Well I am going to have to eat my words on that complaint as Jake Rivett is far from being a bully in Hatch’s new book Never Go Alone. As for nobody liking bullies, the fact that Donald Trump was favorably elected as president indicates to me that some people actually do like bullies. So in both cases I am wrong. In Flash Crash, Rivett was a secondary character which meant that the reader didn’t really get to know him. In that novel Rivett went to extreme measures to coerce informants into giving out information which is why I considered him a bully. In Never Go Alone, Rivett is once again an intense individual but instead of terrifying sources of information into spilling the beans, he tricks them into giving him information by getting them to trust him. Which is something that I can truly appreciate.

Never Go Alone is a crime thriller with Jake Rivett going undercover to investigate a series of unusual robberies. The robberies are unique in that the thieves target locations owned by multibillionaire and real estate mogul Arthur Metropolis. The modus operandi of the robbers is also quite unusual as the thieves enter their targets through what would normally be inaccessible such as entering through the window of a top floor apartment of a high rise building using a construction crane as a launching post. The thieves consider themselves part of a group known as urban explorers, thrill seekers that explore man-made structures such as abandoned buildings, underground sewers or storm drains. It is the world of urban exploration that Jake Rivett must immerse himself in which would normally be right up his alley except for one important fact. He has a profound fear of heights.

Never Go Alone is an intoxicating thrill and Hatch is on his way to making Jake Rivett a fun and likable character. Even though a sizeable number of Americans think that being a bully is a positive trait, I am not one of them, so I am glad to see that Jake Rivett is not a bully. Though it didn’t have quite the amount of techno-speak that was part of Hatch’s first techno-thriller Flash Crash, it did elaborate on some interesting photographic techniques used by urban explorers.

Never Go Alone could easily be read as a standalone novel.

To learn more about the series check out Denison Hatch’s Jake Rivett series.