Buy this book
Books N Bytes participates in affiliate programs including Amazon Associates and Bookshop.org. We may earn a commission when you purchase through our links at no extra cost to you.
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).
Related reads
If you liked The Freeman
Miamigrad
by Jerry Ahern
Miamigrad by Jerry and Sharon Ahern 1989 review. A late-Cold-War paramilitary thriller about a Soviet invasion of Miami via Cuba, played for paperback action rather than political seriousness.
The Golden Shield of IBF
by Jerry Ahern
Jerry and Sharon Ahern doing one of their late thrillers. Brigade-level military action wrapped around a recovered Nazi gold premise. Pulp in the warmest sense.
The Lincoln Lawyer
by Michael Connelly
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly 2005 review. Mickey Haller, a Los Angeles defense attorney who works out of the back of a Lincoln Town Car, takes a case that pulls him into something larger. The novel that launched a series and a film franchise.
Big Little Lies
by Liane Moriarty
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty 2014 review. Three mothers at an Australian elementary school converge on a kindergarten Trivia Night where someone will die. The contemporary domestic-suspense novel that defined the late-2010s book-club shelf.
In the Woods
by Tana French
In the Woods by Tana French 2007 review. Dublin Murder Squad detective Rob Ryan is assigned to a child murder in the same woods where his two best friends disappeared twenty years earlier. The Edgar winner that launched the strongest contemporary literary-crime series.
Tell No One
by Harlan Coben
Tell No One by Harlan Coben 2001 review. A pediatrician receives an email containing a video clip of his murdered wife, eight years after her death. The single best Coben standalone and the one that defined the contemporary domestic-thriller register.
More by this author