THE RECRUIT

Young neo-Nazis in Rancho Santa Elena, a quiet Southern California town, conduct a campaign of hate crimes against minorities, leading police detective Ben Wade to uncover a widespread White supremacist conspiracy.

Set in 1987, this thriller focuses on Jacob, a 14-year-old boy who’s recruited into a gang of skinheads by his 20-something neighbor Ian after Ian sees him testing out homemade pipe bombs in his backyard. Ian, the son of a corrupt councilman whose eldest son was killed in Vietnam, has terrorized a Vietnamese shop owner named Bao Phan and his family by leaving a fatally poisoned, throat-slit dog by their back door. Jacob, the abused son of a traumatized Vietnam veteran, is officially inducted as a skinhead after being pressured to brutally attack Mexican migrant workers. Shocked to discover his father is having an affair with a young Vietnamese woman—Bao’s 22-year-old daughter, Linh—Jacob is overcome with rage. Meanwhile, having left the LAPD, worn down by gang wars in that city, Wade is surprised to confront an even worse form of violence in Rancho Santa Elena. In Los Angeles, there was a logic to the gang wars, which were over drugs, territory, and money. “This is just hate,” he says. “Nothing rational about it.” Though set in the past, at a time when the internet was first enabling hate groups opposed to the very existence of the federal government to link up via online bulletin boards, Drew’s sequel to Shadow Man (2017) could hardly speak more powerfully to the present moment in the United States. A terrific crime novel with an explosive climax, the book dares to find a level of empathy with its young perpetrators, connecting the dots between being frightened and “walking around in the dark” and turning to hate.

A moving, grippingly relevant mystery.