Publication Date: January 19, 2014
In Seven Unholy Days by Jerry Hatchett, Matt Decker is a designer of energy grids on a routine inspection in rural Mississippi when the U.S. is attacked. The grid is out of control and the enemy isn’t obvious. The attack seems to come home on Matt. Can he stop the slid into chaos and save the United States?
The author, Jerry Hatchett, gave me this novel in exchange for my review.
There’s a heavy dose of camp to Hatchett’s writing (read my review of Pawnbroker). The protagonist is almost implausibly the focus of the greater story line. He is James Bond, Jack Ryan and John McClane rolled into one über-fantastic package. For some readers, this sort of character may be off-putting. He’s so full of himself that when things are melting down, he says to the guy working hard to avoid disaster, “get out of my way, so I can do it right” (paraphrased). Meanwhile, the decision maker of the facility calmly lights his pipe and gives the go-ahead for Matt to do what he must do. Not only is Matt Decker so ridiculous, he’s awesome, but the whole environment is done in a way that delights this reader.
The plot doesn’t take the reader really anywhere that we can’t see coming. The flow is staccato in a way that seems to push the urgency, though we know, someone so cool has to save the world, right? Hatchett wouldn’t go so far off script, would he? Hatchett uses quite a lot of technical devices in his story which also may throw off readers who have to understand the technology behind the text. I’m generally willing to suspend disbelief for what I don’t understand. There is a feel of research to some of the weaponry and engineering employed. There is a religious angle that left this reader feeling as though Hatchett was going for the full-thriller market. It was unnecessary and bit annoying but, at the end of the day, a creative choice that some readers may enjoy. This reader found it to be the first lemming off of the cliff.
Seven Unholy Days is a grand story of good vs. evil. There are big personalities, big moves and big action. It is a story with few surprises that doesn’t pretend to be what it isn’t. There are moments when Hatchett could have stepped back a bit (the aforementioned religious aspect) and edited to streamline but overall the feel of the story is along the lines of the more over-the-top action movies of the day. Seven Unholy Days is a fast read and entertaining novel for fans of the genre who want the big moves paired with larger-than-life personalities.
For a novel so recently released, Seven Unholy Days has a large number of reviews on Amazon that encompass a fairly mixed bag. The end result for this reader was the knowledge that not everyone likes everything, so if this sounds like a book for you, give it a shot. Jerry Hatchett is a Houston-based author born in the Mississippi Delta. Seven Unholy Days is his fourth novel.
Read an excerpt and buy Seven Unholy Days by Jerry Hatchett on
Amazon U.S. Amazon U.K. Amazon CA