Eye for Eye Trilogy
by JK Franko
October 19 – December 31, 2020 Tour
If you like smart, fast-paced thrillers with unexpected twists, then you’ll love J.K. Franko’s Eye for Eye Trilogy!
“REALISTIC & CHILLING!” – Mystery Thriller Week
Eye for Eye
“NEW TWIST ON STRANGERS ON A TRAIN”
~ THE SUNDAY TIMES
Roy and Susie are on a skiing holiday, trying to take a break from the constant reminders of their daughter, tragically killed by a careless driver. Out of the blue they meet Deb and Tom, another couple with a tragic past and a shocking proposal to put things right.
As the bodies accumulate, secrets are revealed and alliances crumble. Ultimate survival depends on following the rules for a perfect murder. And the first rule is… leave no singing bones.
The Trial of Joe Harlan Junior
A college Halloween party. A night of fun, dress-up, and laughter. But for Kristy Wise, it quickly became a night of horror.
Now, Joe Harlan Junior, entrepreneur and son of a prominent senator, is at risk of losing everything as he stands accused of a crime he insists he did not commit.
Yet the facts are undisputed: Kristy was drugged, and she did have sex with Joe.
But was it consensual?
Read the story. Listen to the testimony. Is everything that happens next justified?
YOU decide.
Tooth for Tooth
What would YOU do?
What would you do if you got away with murder? Would you stop there? Could you?
Susie and Roy thought that they committed the perfect crime.
Their planning was meticulous. Their execution flawless.
But, there is always a loose end, isn’t there? Always a singing bone.
Now, while enemies multiply and suspicions abound, their perfect world begins to crumble.
The hunters have become the hunted.
Life for Life
What would YOU do if someone threatened your family?
Roy Cruise and his pregnant wife Susie barely survived an assassination attempt in their own home. The police now have them under surveillance. Meanwhile, Kristy Wise is a loose cannon—she knows too much and is trying to “set things right.”
What goes around comes around. And in this case, Roy and Susie may have pushed things too far. There are too many dead bodies. Too many foes plotting against them.
Roy and Susie must outwit the police and neutralize their enemies once and for all. If not, their days of retribution may end behind bars… or six feet under.
Eye for Eye Trilogy Details:
| Genre: | Thriller, Suspense, Crime, Legal |
| Published by: | Talion Publishing |
| Publication Date: | October 5, 2020 |
| Number of Pages: | 1050 |
| ASIN: | B08KSCHTRX |
| Series: | Talion Trilogy #1 |
| Find out more or get your copy: |
Amazon & Goodreads |
Read an excerpt from Eye for Eye:
When I try to piece together how this whole mess began, a part of me thinks it may have started over thirty years ago. At least the seeds were planted that far back, in the early 1980s. What happened then, at that summer camp in Texas, set the stage for everything that was to come.
Odd, how something so remote in time and geography continues to impact me here, today.
Sometimes I try to imagine her, how she felt—that eleven year-old girl—as she ran, stumbling and tripping through the woods that night. I try to put myself in her shoes. When I do, I wonder if she was frightened.
Did she understand the consequences of what she’d gotten herself into? I imagine it felt otherworldly to her, like a dream. But not a good dream. No, one of the bad ones—the ones that make your heart machine-gun as you try to outrun some dark thing that’s chasing you. But the faster you try to run, the slower you go, your legs feeling leaden, clumsy, useless.
Panic sets in. Tears of frustration form. Fear takes hold and won’t let go. You open your mouth to scream but realize, to your horror, that you’re paralyzed. It’s not that you can’t scream; you can’t even breathe. Not a dream—a nightmare.
Then again, all that may simply be my imagination. It could just be me projecting what I might have felt onto Joan. Maybe she wasn’t scared at all.
True, it was dark out. The night smelled of rain, but there was no lightning, only the far-off rumble of thunder hinting at a distant storm. There were no trail lights, no visibility but for the moon peeking out intermittently from behind a patchwork of clouds. But, Joan had been down this trail before. She was running toward the main cabin.
She had been at Camp Willow for almost two full weeks. She had been up and down that trail at least ten times a day, every day. Of course, that was during the day, and always with her buddy, or a camp counselor (the children called them troop leaders). Joan had never been on the trail at night. And never alone.
Maybe I imagine Joan was scared because, as an adult, I believe that she should have been. I would have been terrified.
***
Excerpt from Eye For Eye by JK Franko. Copyright © 2019 by JK Franko. Reproduced with permission from JK Franko. All rights reserved.
My Review
Eye for Eye Trilogy by JK Franko is a must read because the entertainment value is off the charts. The three books, Eye for Eye, Tooth for Tooth, and Life for Life should definitely be read in order because they flow as one long book. The details, events, and character arcs span smoothly across the books, culminating in a spectacular “conclusion” at the end of Book 3. The word conclusion is emphasized because this story is thankfully not over. Book 4 will be out in 2021.
As they say, there is no such thing as a perfect murder. Roy Cruise and his wife, Susie, quickly find out that no amount of planning makes the deed foolproof, airtight, or ironclad.
In Eye for Eye, Roy and Susie are on ski vacation in Colorado. They have already lost their only child, Camilla, in a car accident when Liam Bareto slammed into her because he was texting. When Tom Wise approaches Roy at the ski lodge, shades of Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (or the retelling humorous version Throw Momma from the Train) kick into high gear. Tom and Deb Wise haven’t lost their daughter, Kristy, but she was drugged and date raped by a senator’s son, Joe Harlan Jr, in Austin, Texas. The seeds of self-administered justice in the form of a quid pro quo take root in fertile soil during that Colorado vacation and set the stage for the entire trilogy to unfold, slowly and meticulously.
In Tooth for Tooth, Roy and Susie have committed the perfect murder, and so has Deb Wise. Joe Harlan Jr is now missing and presumed dead, and Liam Bareto is no longer in a coma. His mother, Liz Bareto, refuses to believe it wasn’t murder and goes on her own fact-finding quest to bring the culprit to justice. But again, is there such thing as perfect murders, even when the prime suspects who have motives were not even around to commit the crimes? In Book 2, these so-called perfect crimes start to unravel, and the main actors are definitely starting to feel the heat.
In Book 3, Life for Life, outwitting the law has become almost impossible for these murderers, with some becoming victims themselves. Taking the law into your own hands seems like a good idea when emotions are running high and the killing and revenge seem justified. Who will get caught, who will die, and who will get away scot free? Maybe all or maybe none; book three will reveal all this and more, so sit tight and dive into this fabulous trilogy.
The Eye for Eye trilogy (Talion series) is completely engaging and well executed. The characters are mostly unlikable because of their selfish actions and messy decisions, but they jump off the page as real and plausible. If you watch enough true crime documentaries, you know all of these events could happen in real life.
JK Franko’s writing is wonderfully precise. The prose is tight, without any superfluous words or action cluttering up the pages. Nothing is added to the story that does not tie in at some point to the overall plot. The twists and surprises throughout, especially in book 3, will keep the reader riveted and maybe even exclaiming out loud at the turn of events and unexpected revelations. The narration is an interesting construction because in addition to the disembodied third-person narrative, a first-person narrator, a therapist, interjects her part of the storytelling throughout. She is the therapist for both Roy and Susie, and she sinks deeper and deeper into their affairs and their lives and ends up with her own agenda later on in the story. This narrator is unreliable, of course, but she becomes a prominent player in this captivating tale of revenge, vindication, and murder. Everyone has secrets in these books, with an important secret dating back decades and a catalyst for some of the present grisly events. The truth has a tendency to claw its way to the surface eventually, and the reader is thus presented with a tale that is intricate and complex yet easily navigated and enjoyed without too much confusion as the pieces of the puzzle fall satisfyingly into place. JK Franko knows how to write a complicated thriller that leaves no loose ends and no disappointed readers in its wake.
Speaking of murder, the Grim Reaper is obviously an integral character in this motley cast. Death shows up on Roy and Susie’s doorstep in Book 1, and by Book 3, he has outstayed everyone’s welcome, leaving behind a trail of bodies a mile long. You are going to love these sensational books and these mostly despicable characters.
Enter the giveaway below on or before December 21, 2020, for a chance to win some fabulous prizes.
I received free copies of all three books from Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours in exchange for my honest review.
Author Bio:
J.K. FRANKO was born and raised in Texas. His Cuban-American parents agreed there were only three acceptable options for a male child: doctor, lawyer, and architect. After a disastrous first year of college pre-Med, he ended up getting a BA in philosophy (not acceptable), then he went to law school (salvaging the family name) and spent many years climbing the big law firm ladder. After ten years, he decided that law and family life weren’t compatible. He went back to school where he got an MBA and pursued a Ph.D. He left law for corporate America, with long stints in Europe and Asia.
His passion was always to be a writer. After publishing a number of non-fiction works, thousands of hours writing, and seven or eight abandoned fictional works over the course of eighteen years, EYE FOR EYE became his first published novel.
J.K. Franko now lives with his wife and children in Florida.
Catch Up With JK Franko On:
jkfranko.com, Goodreads, Instagram, Bookbub, Twitter, & Facebook!
Tour Participants:
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Enter To Win!
This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for JK Franko. There will be Six (6) winners for this tour. Two (2) winners will each receive a $10 Amazon.com gift card; Two (2) winners will each receive 1 print edition of Eye for Eye, book 1 of the Talion series, by JK Franko (US and Canada Only); and Two (2) winners will each receive 1 ebook edition of Eye for Eye, book 1 of the Talion series, by JK Franko. The giveaway begins on October 19, 2020 and runs through December 21, 2020. Void where prohibited.
I can’t say enough about this Trilogy. I just hope more is coming!!!