Review: Urgent Justice (Vigilante Justice Book 2.5) by John Etzil

Jack Lamburt has already had his fair share of fights as a small-town sheriff in rural New York, but this latest thriller by John Etzil, Urgent Justice, sees the intrepid hero hit the road in search of a missing local girl. However, this time, the sheriff won’t be going on his action-packed adventure alone. With a rough-around-the-edges nonagenarian sidekick, Jack Lamburt must take down a powerful religious leader and child abuser with an entire town gunning for the vigilante duo.

While their journey begins as a simple mission to scope out the town where the girl supposedly disappeared, Lamburt isn’t known for keeping a cool head, and the fists and bullets soon begin flying. Frances may be old, but she knows how to keep her wits about her, and adds a constant comedic element to the story. A mixture of whiskey wisdom and spitfire grace, Frances isn’t the hero of the story, but she certainly keeps the pages turning.

When the Prophet of the town realizes that the authorities may be hot on his trail, the action heats up, and the recon mission becomes a desperate fight to survive. With intense action scenes, cutting dialogue and sparse, mood-setting language, Etzil maintains the same relentless tone and pace of his earlier books. With gritty determination and a surprisingly large number of spare lives, Jack Lamburt once again finds allies in strange places, hits hard when he needs to, and somehow manages to win the day.

The Vigilante Justice novels do have a somewhat predictable pattern, in that the hero may be flawed, but he also seems invincible, so victory is almost guaranteed. However, Etzil isn’t afraid to break a reader’s heart either. There is a dark edge to the writing and the plot, in part due to its reflection of the real world. Sex trafficking and the use of religious devotion as a tool for evil are dangerous and very active problems. This doesn’t make the plot more enticing, necessarily, but it does help this novella strike a more serious note as the true depths of evil are revealed.

Etzil does a very good job of slowly cranking up the pace and the intensity, releasing the valve with occasional moments of levity, but generally pushing forward to the grim task of a dangerous rescue. Though this installment is a novella, it has some of the same issues with previous books in the series. The books are typically short, and can be read in an afternoon, but the brevity often leads to plot holes or scenes that feel unnaturally fast. Some of the action scenes and suspenseful moments are drawn out appropriately, but then a key piece of exposition or character development may be glossed over, or opportunities for those moments are missed.

That being said, many readers enjoy a quick deep dive into a thriller that only takes them a day or two to consume, and there is plenty of enjoyable prose in Urgent Justice to satisfy new and old readers alike. Etzil has carved out a well-deserved following with his Jack Lamburt series, and this shorter installment offers an entertaining spin on the buddy-cop novel.