don't you forget about me

When Roddy LaPointe needed help, Jim Zigarowski was there for him. Zig knew Roddy through his sister Nola Brown, who had saved the life of Zig’s daughter when they were kids. Zig never forgot that, and when Nola had needed help as an adult, Zig helped her out, whether she wanted him to or not. Now Roddy believes he has found information about their mother, who had been murdered when Roddy and Nola were young.

What they find is that someone is systematically killing the group that Roddy and Nola’s mother had hung out with in high school. They had called themselves The Breakfast Club, and they had escalated from smoking and drinking to breaking into houses. What they found in one house had put targets on their backs.

The group was Fetch, P.K., Melinda, Ivy, and Daniella. Daniella had been murdered decades before, as Roddy well knew. Melinda had left the group when they had escalated their behavior, as she had decided she wanted to go to law school and focused on her future instead. P.K. had died in a freak boating accident. Fetch and Ivy had disappeared.

Until recently, when Fetch had reappeared and visited a funeral home to plan his service. He knew that he was dying, and he wanted to set things in order. But before his illness could kill him, he was murdered. This is the thread Roddy was following, thinking it may lead to the person who had killed his mother. And when Nola had figured out what Roddy was up to, she started investigating also.

Nola was a trained soldier and artist-in-residence for the Army. When she drew a picture, she could see things in the environment that others missed. She was smart and stealthy, and she knew that she had a better chance of finding the truth than her brother did. But mostly she knew that Roddy wouldn’t let it go until he found out what had happened to their mother.

As Zig and Roddy follow their investigation, and Zola hers, they all find a far more tangled web of lies and secrets than they imagined. In between corrupt cops and federal secrets, long-held grudges and intimate secrets lies the truth of The Breakfast Club and all the decisions that tore them apart.

The Viper is a volatile novel of past secrets and present trauma. It is an intricately plotted novel of friendship gone wrong, of stupid decisions by teenagers and the deadly consequences that can follow. Though there are a lot of deadly gunfights, the truth makes it way to the surface, although not without inflicting a lot of damage along the way.

The Viper is the third book in the Zig and Nola series, and while these books have quite a bit of sadness and darkness to them, the two main characters are survivors. They have a special bond, and it’s that bond that keeps these novels from getting too painful to read. Zig and Nola bring out the best in each other, becoming a found family with unbreakable bonds. These are great characters, and they linger in my thoughts long after I finish reading the book. The Viper is not easy to read, as there is a lot of violence and bad people doing bad things. But there is also love and hope and healing.

Egalleys for The Viper were provided by William Morrow through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.