The 13th Hour: Chaos
by Richard Doetsch
September 5 – 30, 2022 Virtual Book Tour
Hi, everyone!
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE 13th HOUR : CHAOS by Richard Doetsch on this Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tour.
Below you will find a book description, my book review, an excerpt from the book, the author’s bio and social media links and a Kingsumo giveaway. Good luck on the giveaway and enjoy!
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Book Description
A Mesmerizing Thriller Told in Reverse
On a warm Fourth of July in the quiet town of Byram Hills, Nick Quinn watches as his wife and daughter die in an unprecedented terrorist attack. Amid the disaster, Nick is approached by a dying friend who hands Nick an antique pocket watch.
Emotionally shattered and desperate, Nick takes the watch and is shocked to find himself propelled back in time to where he was an hour ago, before the attack on his town. Quickly stopping the course of events, his relief is shattered as life spirals in an even more tragic direction.
At the top of each hour, the watch sends Nick back two hours to live one hour again, a backwards march to relive each hour of his day. A twelve-hour journey providing precious but limited time to protect Julia and Katy and uncover the source of the ever growing threat.
But each time Nick thinks he’s solved the crime and secured the future, he uncovers new levels of deception, agony, and betrayal, ultimately revealing a far more sinister plot with unexpected players and grim, global consequences.
If Nick hasn’t set things right by the 13th hour, not only will his wife and daughter be lost forever to the chaos, but an even greater catastrophe will be unleashed upon the world.
The 13th Hour Chaos
Genre: Time Travel Thriller
Published by: Permuted Press
Publication Date: May 3rd 2022
Number of Pages: 384
ISBN: 1637583060 (ISBN13: 9781637583067)
Series: A Nick Quinn Thriller; The 13th Hour Series
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My Book Review
RATING: 5 out of 5 Stars
THE 13th HOUR: CHAOS (The Nick Quinn Thriller Book #2) by Richard Doetsch is an exciting and fast-paced time travel thriller featuring Nick Quinn. This story is the second in the series but can easily be read as a standalone thriller.
Nick Quinn is celebrating with his family and friends at the town’s Fourth of July party when one of his best friends appears telling Nick to take his backpack and pocket watch as he dies from a gunshot wound at his feet. Nick knows what the pocket watch does, but before he can even consider going back in time to save his friend, a terrorist attack leaves everyone he loves dead.
As Nick travels back two hours, he begins to discover betrayal, deception and a plot that will have worldwide consequences. Each time he goes back in time, he discovers another unexpected twist in the hours he repeats. Unless he can set everything right before The 13th Hour his wife and daughter could be lost forever and the world thrown into war.
I really loved this edge-of-your-seat thriller. The time travel plot was unique with the characters only able to go back at two-hour intervals and not just anywhere in time. The plotting was done in a unique way which had Nick and Zane having to keep changing what they were doing in the future because of the changes they caused in the past. It sounds confusing, but as you read it, it is makes sense and keeps you turning the pages. Nick is a likable protagonist with close friends who are always there for him and his family no matter the consequences and the antagonists were all deceptive with personal motives which keep you guessing. Zane is a great pivotal character that I hated, felt sorry for and then was happy for him in the end.
This time travel thriller is well worth the read and I hope there will be more in this series.
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Excerpt
from Chapter 1
…[A side door opened, and a man stumbled through, looking barely coherent, and fell into Nick’s arms. His clothes were wet, his salt-and-pepper hair damp. Shocked, Nick realized he knew the man and knew him well. It was his close friend Paul Dreyfus, who had been at the top of the guest list and uncharacteristically late.
Nick supported his friend’s sagging weight and led him to a large couch on the far side of the lobby, where Dreyfus collapsed heavily.
“Are you okay?” Nick asked Paul. “What the hell happened?”
“Listen to me,” Dreyfus whispered.
As Nick let go of his friend, he saw blood covering his hands. Quickly, Nick ripped open Dreyfus’s shirt, revealing what looked like a bullet wound to the chest.
“Oh my God,” Nick breathed. “Julia?”
Julia was immediately at his side.
“Bonnie,” Julia turned to the babysitter, “could you take Katy to the bathroom in the back?”
Bonnie averted her eyes as she pulled Katy down through the back hall.
“What happened?” Nick asked his friend again.
Dreyfus pulled the strap of a dark leather satchel from about his neck and shoulder and looped it over Nick’s. “Listen to me, Nick. Listen very carefully….” Dreyfus paused to breathe, struggling to get the words out. “Don’t let that bag out of your sight…. He’s coming for you. He’s…coming for Julia.”
“Who? What are you talking about?”
Dreyfus reached into the bag and withdrew a single picture that made Nick’s blood run cold. It was an image of a man floating against the rocky shoreline of a lake, water lapping at his body, his face having lost all color, the skin white and curdled like rotted cheese, lips blue, cracked, and wet. There was no question that the man had died a painful death. In fact, he had almost surely drowned, his wet body and vacant stare leaving little doubt about the means of his demise.
Nick tried to catch his panicked breath. He knew the man, knew him well, better than anyone: he was looking into his own lifeless eyes.
“You all die….” Dreyfus whispered.
Julia turned to Nick, her skin flushing red as confusion filled her eyes. “Nick?” Her voice trembled.
Nick stared at Dreyfus, the impossibility of his words echoing in his head.
“You, Julia….” Dreyfus struggled to draw another breath. “Katy. Everyone.”
Nick turned and looked through the glass doors at the gathered crowd, which listened in rapt attention to the senator’s speech. Everyone Nick cared about was here, most listening to political rhetoric they couldn’t care less about. They were all attending as a favor to Nick and Julia.
“When?” Nick whispered to his dying friend.
Dreyfus seized Nick’s hand, locking eyes with him. “It’s all in the bag.”
“What’s in the bag?”
“You have to find me….” Dreyfus’s words sounded like a plea.
“I don’t understand…find you where?”
“I’m so sorry—”
A sudden roar exploded from the room, cheers and applause, as if the senator had concluded the speech of his life. The rising voices of the now-standing audience only amplified Nick’s dread.
And then a rumble shook the world, deep and foreboding.
Another rumble, an explosion, like a bomb, and then another and another and another….
The crowd fell silent, eyes darting about in confusion. New York was not the land of earthquakes, but the shaking earth said otherwise. Deep heavy rumblings seemed to roll the flagstone floor.
“Nick?” Julia looked around the lobby in fear as a hum began to grow. “What the hell is that?”
As the rumble grew in intensity, a collective panic took over the reception room, chaos filling the air as everyone tried to flee from the unknown with incoherent screams of fear, cramming through the doors to escape whatever danger was approaching.
The deep roar grew deafening, drowning out the screams, shaking the castle’s foundations. And then, as if hell had been unleashed, the reception room’s outer windows shattered; incomprehensibly, a wall of water drove through the space, rising toward the ceiling in seconds. Like a tidal wave, the barrage of water tore the room apart. Tables, chairs, fixtures, and carpets spun into a churning maelstrom. Men and woman were scooped up, helplessly tossed about, bodies hurled and twisted into dark whirlpools.
The light of day dimmed as the wall sconces winked out. Emergency lights reacted to the loss of power, their bright halogen rays flicking on, impervious to the water’s assault within their clear plastic housings, their beams like shafts of lightning, piercing the murky, rising, roiling waters.
An enormous howl of wind groaned as air was driven from the building, its gusts sweeping the water’s surface into blinding mist. Husbands and wives, friends and neighbors were quickly swept away, their screams doused as they were pulled under and sucked out through the narrow window openings like water through a drain.
From behind the thick glass doors, Nick and Julia watched in horror as their friends drowned, their twisted bodies becoming human flotsam and jetsam before being sucked out through the shattered picture windows on a violent tide into oblivion.
The lobby had already become a deep pool, the waters rising to Nick and Julia’s shoulders. Then, as if a tornado had struck, the glass doors were torn from their moorings and thrown into the tidal flow. A rush of water quickly rose toward the ceiling, sweeping Dreyfus’s body away.
Water filled the vestibule, its polished granite walls momentarily looking like an Italian pool. The couch where Dreyfus had lain, the tables and chairs splintered in the onslaught, all flushed through the main doors, carried on a raging current.
“Katy!” Julia screamed.
In the rising water, Nick swam for the bathroom where Katy and Bonnie had gone, the leather satchel looped about his body complicating the impossible task. The bathroom was at the far end of the vestibule, sequestered in a corner where the water’s attack had been delayed by the turns of the hallway. But the small, high windows now exploded, water pouring through as if from the spigots of heaven.
Julia swam hard in the same direction, battling the raging waters that rose higher and higher. She fought with all her might, kicking and pulling against the current, but the suction created by the millions of gallons of flowing water took hold of her. Despite all her years of swimming, in spite of her natural strength, she was losing, drawn inch by inch toward the door where death awaited.
Nick caught hold of her hand, his other arm wrapped tightly around a chandelier overhead. They were pulled and tossed by the water as it rose, pushing them up against the ceiling. Holding on with all his strength, Nick pulled her to him, but the suction made her feel like a two-ton weight, straining his arms, his grip.
“Hold on!” Nick yelled as their heads banged the ceiling, the water continuing to rise around them.
“We have to get Katy!” Julia struggled to hold on as Nick fought with every fiber of his being to not let her slip away.
“Mommy!” Katy’s cry pierced the cacophony of churning waters.
“Katy!” Julia screamed back. “Mommy’s coming!”
As the water pulled at them, Nick and Julia’s eyes locked in an unspoken understanding of what was happening. In order to get to Katy, to have any hope of saving her….
“Let me go,” Julia pleaded. “Save Katy, please. Please save Katy.”
Nick looked deep into his wife’s eyes; he couldn’t bear to do what she was asking. She was everything to him, his life, his heart. She was his soul.
“No,” Nick said. “Hold on.”
“It’s okay,” she said, holding his gaze. “Let me go.”
With her free hand, she grasped Nick’s fingers and gently pried them loose.
And with their eyes still locked, she released Nick’s hand. Her body, caught in the suction, instantly disappeared.
Despite the agony in his heart, Nick turned his body toward the bathroom. He reached and caught hold of one of the brass wall sconces mounted on the granite wall as the water continued its rise, only an inch of breathable air remaining.
Nick plunged under, into the current. The brass sconces lined the wall leading to the bathroom like a horizontal ladder. Hand over hand he pulled himself along, fighting with all his might, his arms burning with the impossible effort.
He briefly surfaced. “Katy!” he screamed in the narrow airway as he gulped sweet oxygen. “I’m coming!”
But the force of the current, the draw of the millions of gallons of water flowing through the building, had grown tenfold. Sapped of strength, Nick dug deep within himself…he couldn’t let her die, he wouldn’t fail her.
“Peas, Daddy!” Katy cried from up ahead. “Peas.…”
As the rising water squeezed away the last bit of air, Nick took a deep breath and dived under again.
He spotted the door, its giant brass handle gleaming with the refracted beams of the emergency lights. The thick mahogany portal opened outward, seated against a heavy metal frame, its design still withstanding the building pressure of the rising waters. But Nick knew it wouldn’t hold for long, the waters were surely pouring under the door, through any and every crack as it sought the path of least resistance.
“Daddy!”
Even under the churning water, Nick could hear Katy’s cry.
The violence of the current grew unbeatable. The weight of the satchel around his neck, like a bag of lead; his lungs burning, fighting the rush of water that pulled at him like a colossal magnet.
Nick reached for the handle of the door, his fingertips swiping the brass; straining for purchase, he planted his legs against the wall and used his last bit of strength to grasp the door.
The fire in his lungs pushed him to the brink, twinkling spots dancing before his eyes as his brain thirsted for oxygen.
And the suction caught hold of him, yanking him away, pulling him backwards toward the shattered windows.
With utter despair, his heart broken, having failed his wife and daughter, Nick knew he would join them in death.
Unable to resist, he gasped, and the water invaded his lungs….
And his world fell to darkness.]
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Author Bio
Richard Doetsch is the author of six international bestsellers published in twenty-eight countries, with several acquired for film and television. He is an adrenaline junkie with a passion for kitesurfing, skydiving, SCUBA diving, triathlons, and defying gravity in Zero G aircraft. He has served as CEO, president, and director in the real-estate industry, managing, creating, and preserving more than 50,000 units of affordable housing with an emphasis on social and community programs.
He is married to his childhood sweetheart, Virginia, who is the impetus and inspiration behind everything he writes.
Social Media Links
RichardDoetsch.com
Goodreads
BookBub
Instagram – @richarddoetsch
Twitter – @richarddoetsch
Facebook – @richarddoetsch
Purchase Links
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KINGSUMO GIVEAWAY
https://kingsumo.com/g/1em5nv/the-13th-hour-chaos-by-richard-doetsch
Thanks for the review! I am reading this one right – very exciting, lots of action!
You are welcome! Enjoy!