What Amazon says
“Yeah, though I walk through the valley…”
Special Investigator Teri Altro is a hard-driving member of the Drug Interdiction Task Force. She is cold and aloof, with no room in her life for personal entanglements. No one is allowed to call her by her first name. No one is allowed to get close to her. Any form of physical contact is unacceptable to her, except when her body demands it. People who work with Altro respect her, but have learned to stay out her way. She carries a gun in her shoulder bag.
When Altro first notices the man staring at her, he doesn’t seem like anything special… just some guy in the drugstore. But when three men walk in the door to assassinate her, he kills them all with fluid ease, and so quickly that she doesn’t even have time to pull her own gun. The confrontation is so eerily violent that it leaves Altro wondering just who… or what… the man is.
Over the next four days she learns the man is John Walker Michaels, a man known to the Hmong of Laos as the Valley Walker, a man the army has classified as a deserter. He is an openly emotional man who draws her out of her shell and into the world of Hmong mysticism. At the end of this time… even after talking to him, learning his history and meeting his family… Altro can only shake her head when asked what he is like.
She had touched him and felt his warmth. She knew he was real. Or was he?
My review
The Valley Walker is the first novel I read by this author and it was an excellent read. The opening scene pulls you right into both the drama and the supernatural element of the story with a young soldier who is badly injured and who is being nurtured and cared for by an elderly woman. Her care is unorthodox and indicates the possession of the young man’s body by another power in the form of a Great Dragon.
From this highly exciting and evocative start, the story progresses to a setting in a pharmacy in the USA where a man is watching a woman he knows is named Teri Altro. He also knows that three men are coming to the pharmacy to kill her and he is there to intervene. The prospective killers are the soldiers of General Khun Pao, a drug lord who rules a heroine empire in Laos. From this point, the story plunges into a turbulent and fast paced battle between the man, called the Valley Walker who controls the Great Dragon in terms of Laos lore, and the drug lord and his soldiers.
Teri Altro is part of a team that has been appointed to try to track down and shut down the drug dealers. The entire team of interesting and specialised people become involved in Teri’s attempted murder and the aftermath. I particularly enjoyed Jessica Harmon, a young and beautiful woman who is part of the team. She is very clever, competent and hardworking and is also feminine and dresses beautifully. I enjoyed that presentation of female achievers as opposed to Teri who was the typical power dressing, ball-breaking woman who feels a need to present herself to the world in a masculine and unfeminine way. Hooray for Jessica as a great example of feminine and pretty females in high powered positions.
For the men, there is the mysterious Bill Mallory who appears to be a good man but does some strange and possibly questionable things throughout the book. There are also the two young men, Sam Lu and Doolee, who are both clever, innovative, loyal and good fun.
This book is imaginative, fast moving and packed with interesting characters who evolve and make surprising decisions. The Valley Walker has an influence over everyone he comes into contact with, both evil and working for justice. It is a fascinating storyline and, although complex, the story is well written and easy to follow.
Purchase The Valley Walker from Amazon US here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007Z3U62C
