Fujita 4 by Terence Gallagher || KappaCino Book Club

Fujita 4 is a whirlwind of a crime thriller, sparked by a chance encounter between a deeply religious Irish professor and an escaped death row convict in the southern United States. As they race to evade capture and cross the Canadian border, exactly where does justice end and morality begin?

Because we live in a world where money is needed to survive, Latte Lindsay runs a number of affiliate programmes and offers contributed or partnered content. If you choose to click the links and read the posts, the site may earn a commission or receives a payment. All of the opinions are my own. Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any partner brands/company(s), beauty & lifestyle brands, airlines or hotel chain, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities unless specified.

The Book

What would you be prepared to risk to do what is right? How do the members of a family cope with their own personal grief when one of them dies in tragic circumstances? Should the will of the state always supersede personal morality and religious belief? It is 2004 and Andrew Burke, an idiosyncratic but brilliant Irish academic, has a chance encounter with an escaped death row inmate in America’s deep south after a devastating hurricane. He makes the momentous decision to help the injured prisoner evade his inevitable fate. The events Andrew sets in motion cause him to lock horns with a powerful politician whose family is coming to terms with the death from the drug overdose of his daughter. To help him and the prisoner he enlists the assistance of Susan Aldershot, a veterinarian, in his scheme to get Williams across the border and into Canada.

Thoughts on the Book

The question of “how far will you go?” is one that gets thrown about a lot. In some respects, it’s about how hard you are willing to work to get where you want to be. Other times, it is about the pendulum of morality. What is really right and wrong? Good or bad? And what happens when our current view is challenged and changed? These are the sort of questions that run as a theme through the book. I often find myself in arguments with people about “how far a person will go” with regard to their morals, and more often than not, I fail to get my point across that everyone has a line that they will cross. The story of Fujita 4 demonstrates that nobody really knows where that line is for them until they have been tested with circumstances outside of their control.

Thoughts on the Author

Terence Gallagher splits his time between Naples on Florida’s Gulf Coast and Howth, a fishing village just north of Dublin, Ireland. In his former life, he worked as a management consultant in England, Ireland, The U.S., France, and the Philippines. He is now a writer, keen cyclist, and reluctant gardener. Fujita 4 is his second novel. His first – Analyst Session – will be republished later this year. He is currently working on his third book, A Coup in Makati, due to be published in early 2021.

Overall

This is a pretty good summer read for those of us who are expecting an extended summer. Fujita 4 has a good pace and is well written, and would fit in brilliantly as part of your crime thriller library. The size of the book is deceiving. The cover and page sizes are larger than your average paperback, which means the book is only 214 pages long. But don’t let this fool you. If the book was the same size as a standard paperback, it would easily hit 300 odd pages.