Curb Chek by Zach Fortier

From the Back Cover:

Zach Fortier returns to his hometown as a cop, sure his tactical military training can make a difference. The city has other plans for his idealism.

The novel CurbChek follows his journey into the realities of the street and the officers who work them, the hunters and the hunted jostling for position in the warped core of America's urban melting pot boiling over. The tension builds as we root for Fortier to make it out alive.

His paranoia is he fears he is not paranoid, that the whole world is like this. Endemic to everything, indigenous to  nowhere. Zach is working in your town too.

If you enjoy the genre of true crime, you will definitely enjoy this book. The situations Zach describes are brutal, sad, frustrating, anger inducing, occasionally funny, and very real. Although the accounts have been fictionalized, the basics are true. I found CurbChek hard to read because I hate that there are people out there in such sad circumstances; on the other hand it was heartening to read about the police who are out there every day doing their job and keeping these truths at bay for most of us. If you are not American, it is important to note that policing works differently in different countries but the crimes and criminals are basically the same.

The book is made up of a string of unrelated incidents that are attended by police officer Zach Fortier. It was a quick read in that the flow of the book is excellent, but I could only read so much at a time because of the brutality of the content.

A Taste from page 213:
He kept advancing on the two officers, ignoring any attempts to talk him down. I yelled to get his attention, and he started towards me. I had a car between us, and we actually ran around it a few times - him chasing me and me pepper-spraying him. The spray continued to have no effect; he just wiped it off and kept coming, closing in on me (this was a few years before Tasers). I backed away from the car and pulled out my Glock, trying to talk him down, but he wouldn't respond; he just kept coming at me with that huge knife, head down, eyes locked on mine. It was easy to see him gutting me with no regrets, so I settled into a firing stance.

/5   

Character Development          5

Editing                                      5

Sex                                            3

Violence                                  5

Romance                                 0

Readability/Flow                     5