The Freeman

The Freeman is one of Jerry Ahern's standalone thrillers from the period when he was writing across multiple series and house pseudonyms simultaneously. The setup is classic Ahern: a competent armed protagonist, a small American town being slowly taken over by people who want it under their control, and an extended action sequence in which the protagonist becomes the reason the town survives.

Whether you can ride with Ahern's politics is the threshold question. The Freeman is more pointedly libertarian than the early Survivalist books, and his particular American-pastoral worldview comes through unfiltered. The action sequences are competent. The dialogue is the kind of dialogue that the form has been producing since the 70s.

Three stars. Recommended only to readers already inside the Ahern catalog. New readers should start with Total War (the first Survivalist).