Kurt Brindley’s novel The Good Kill: A Killian Lebron Novel first introduces a character called the killer.  The killer invades the house of a Mexican cartel boss in Ohio, tapes the naked bad guy to a chair in his basement, and with some extremely cruel torture with a machete, he forces the Mexican to confess his sins of sex and drug trafficking as he videos it. The video goes viral to sex and violence addicts, and to drug and sex traffickers who frequent the dark web.

The novel moves back in time with Killian Lebron — although not yet using his name — awaking from a six week induced coma in a Walter Reed veteran hospital wing in D. C., and it is made clear that the Navy Seal’s life will never return to normal after surviving a blast in Mosul, Iraq where he was injured while trying to rescue kidnapped teenage girls who ISIS turned into sex slaves.

The novel then introduces a myriad of bad guys who are involved in sex trafficking, and introduces Toni Steele, who is kidnapped while looking for her twin sister who used the stage name, Ruby Black, in the strip club that she disappeared from. The sex trafficking underworld is portrayed in graphic detail as tastefully as I can imagine.

When Killian is released from the hospital, RJ Gunther, who has loved him since their preteen years, is introduced. RJ is the only truly wholesome character in the whole novel. Her love for Killian never worked out when they were young for reasons that I won’t disclose here. When she is kidnapped by the bad guys, the story revolves around trying to find and rescue her.

I generally shy away from reading novels about dark subjects, and nothing is darker than sex trafficking. Despite that proclivity of mine, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I found the first part of the novel a bit confusing as it jumped around to introduce all the major characters that play important roles later. When I read the first seven chapters a second time, they made perfect sense.

I like the author’s voice and writing style. I would love to read a novel of his that is not so dark. That prejudice of mine should be taken into account when considering the three star rating that I give to this novel.

About the Author

A husband and father of three, Kurt Brindley is also a retired sailor who lives in Southern Pennsylvania in a house on top of a windy and rolling hill. He traveled much of the world while serving in the navy and, aye, he’s got some stories to tell…

Kurt served twenty years and four days in the navy and “retired” as a Senior Chief Petty Officer. He has an undergraduate degree in English from the University of Maryland and a graduate degree in Human Relations from the University of Oklahoma.

In 1998, he took a hiatus from his regular duties as a navy telecommunications specialist to attend the U. S. military’s Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute. The institute is little known to most but is internationally renowned to those in the human relations field.

Upon graduation, Kurt was certified as a Navy Equal Opportunity Adviser and assigned the responsibilities of providing diversity management training and equal opportunity consultation and assistance to navy personnel throughout the navy’s Western Pacific area of operations.

Much of this work focused on awareness and outreach seminars in an effort to mitigate the harassment and abuse that resulted from the confusion and resentment surrounding the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy.

Kurt’s assignment as an EOA was one of the most challenging, and rewarding, assignments of his navy career, and it served as the impetus behind much of his early writing, including his novel THE SEA TRIALS OF AN UNFORTUNATE SAILOR and his short story “Leave.”

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