Christopher Golden Follow

Scientist and DARPA adventurer Dr. Ben Walker returns for his third go-round in Red Hands, a tightly wound horror thriller that just might be my favorite of this series so far.

A car, driven by a man carrying a supremely lethal infection, plows into a July 4th parade before the insane driver starts attacking those at the festivities by hand. His touch is instantly lethal, save for one, a young woman named Maeve, who he infects in his final moments. Panicked, and afraid of coming into contact with anyone else after all that she has just witnessed, Maeve flees for the isolating safety of the woods. After cell phone videos of the attack goes viral, Walker is tasked with recovering Maeve and keeping her safe, with the caveat, of course, that he won’t be the only one looking for her.

Christopher Golden has crafted a timely and supremely compelling read with Red Hands! Reading this in the midst of a pandemic helps, perhaps, if only to remind one that while COVID-19 is, of course, bad, it could also be a hell of a lot worse. The contagion at the heart of this book is absolutely vicious, and Golden describes its fast-acting effects in nicely gory detail as the infected are gruesomely killed off in only a matter of minutes. Being touched by a carrier of the Red Hands virus is a guaranteed death sentence, a conceit that keeps the tension high even as the story builds up a bullet train’s momentum.

While the killer virus angle is well handled, Golden doesn’t rest on his laurels, story-wise. As dangerous as it is, the Red Hands virus would make one hell of a bio-weapon, which means Walker has his work cut out for him in the race to find Maeve. There’s a bevy of Blackcoat operators and foreign intelligence agents gunning for her, and by extension Walker, too, making our central series protagonist a man against the world, almost literally.

And, hey, speaking of the world — our past two encounters have seen Walker off in some far-flung locales, like Turkey and the Iraqi desert, so it’s a welcome change of pace to see him operating on home turf. The forests and mountains of New Hampshire present a vibrant terrain, one that’s dissimilar enough to draw comparisons to the previous two books, but given all the action happening in those woods one best not get too comfortable with that home team advantage.

Red Hands excels as a bio-terror thriller, but it’s most definitely a horror novel through and through. Beyond the extreme lethality of this unusual bug, Golden injects plenty of additional weirdness to the proceedings, along with a few very welcome “HOLY SHIT!” moments, some that welcomingly recall his comic book pedigree, but which also remind you of just how well-earned that Bram Stoker Award win was for Ararat. The climax is an outstanding, high-octane action romp that also puts the emotional and physical horrors of it all front and center, along with some terrifically gooey, pulpy grossness that kept me glued to my Kindle.

Golden injects enough freshness into this third outing, along with expected chills and thrills, to prove there’s still plenty of life left in this series. It feels like a safe bet to say we haven’t seen the last of Ben Walker, but unless Book 4 comes out tomorrow I don’t think his next adventure can come fast enough.