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Adrenaline Rush
Adrenaline Rush by Bevin Goldsmith is a gritty crime thriller with strong elements of psychological drama, military fiction, and trauma fiction. The book follows Detective Kate Molsin, a former Army Military Police officer whose work with the JCIA pulls her into violent cases while her own past keeps clawing its way into the present. At its center, this is not just a detective story about murder, abuse, and justice. It is a story about survival, grief, faith, anger, and the dangerous ways a person can learn to live on adrenaline when peace feels impossible.
Kate narrates with a blunt, bruised honesty that does not try to sound polished or pretty, and that choice gives the book its raw power. She’s sharp, sarcastic, wounded, sometimes funny in a dark way, and often hard to sit with. I appreciated that Goldsmith does not soften her into an easy heroine. Kate can be brave and cruel in the same scene. She can be insightful one moment and reckless the next. That made her feel less like a symbol and more like someone still fighting with herself while trying to fight for other people. The writing has a pulse to it. Fast. Angry. Restless. It fits the title.
The book blends crime scenes, flashbacks, therapy sessions, military memories, romance, and faith in a way that can feel messy, but I think that messiness is partly the point. Kate’s mind doesn’t move in neat lines, so the story doesn’t either. The intensity rarely lets up. Still, the emotional core stayed with me. The scenes with grief, especially around Alex, give the book a softer ache beneath all the gunfire and bravado. Goldsmith seems most interested in the question of what happens when pain becomes a person’s normal weather.
I would recommend Adrenaline Rush to readers who like dark, character-driven crime thrillers and do not mind heavy subject matter. This is not a cozy mystery or a clean procedural. It’s rough and personal. Readers who appreciate damaged protagonists, military backstories, faith woven into trauma recovery, and stories that lean more on emotional force than quiet subtlety will probably connect with it most.
Pages: 199 | ASIN : B0CSN3MQ1H
BLOATER
BLOATER delivers a dark crime thriller built around a string of shocking murders that leave victims grotesquely inflated and displayed like macabre parade balloons. The investigation falls to FBI agents Camby and Lanquist, who slowly uncover a connection between the killings and the victims’ histories of cruelty and bigotry. Alongside this, the novel follows the psychological collapse of Dr. Jeremiah Nowak, a neurosurgeon devastated by his wife’s sudden death. These narrative threads pull together into a grim exploration of vengeance, morality, and the terrifying lengths a disturbed mind might go to when fixated on the idea of consequences for unkindness.
I found the story vivid and unsettling in a way that held my attention even when the scenes made me squirm. The writing moved quickly and often felt cinematic, especially during the forensic sequences. The author had a knack for describing grotesque details with a strange mix of matter-of-fact precision and emotional punch, which made the book feel alive and twitching under my hands. Sometimes the tone veers into almost playful banter between the agents, which gave me a moment to breathe, then the next chapter plunged me back into grisly territory. I liked that rhythm. It kept me alert. It kept me guessing whether I should laugh, grimace, or look away for a second.
The victims were not random. They were people who had spent their lives spreading cruelty, and the killer seemed obsessed with correcting what he saw as a moral imbalance. That idea rattled me. The story poked at the question of whether words can wound deeply enough to trigger monstrous retaliation, and I appreciated that the author let the ugliness of that question sit there without softening it. A few moments felt a bit on the nose, but the emotional force carried the story and made those moments feel raw rather than preachy.
BLOATER left me with a mix of shock, curiosity, and an odd sympathy for characters who were messy, flawed, and sometimes unbearable. I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy crime fiction that leans boldly into horror, to anyone who likes investigative banter paired with stomach-turning forensic scenes, and to those who are comfortable questioning the line between justice and obsession.
Pages: 322 | ASIN : B0G1BJNDM3
