Title: Retribution
Author: Philip Barnard
Publisher: XlibrisUS
ISBN: 978-1984546333
Pages: 86
Genre: Fiction / Mystery
Reviewed by: Jake Bishop

Read Book Review

Author Philip Barnard packs a boatload of story into relatively few pages in this short novel of one man’s quest to come to grips with his past, understand his present, and secure his future for himself and his family.

Sander is a clinical psychologist with a thriving business in Madison, Wisconsin. Though he usually does an excellent job of treating his patients, he has a particularly difficult time treating himself. Sander, a grown man with a wife and two children, suffers from terrifying nightmares of a horrible event from his childhood. His own mother and father were savagely killed in their home while he and his older sister were in the house. His sister immediately became catatonic and was institutionalized. Sander was shipped off to live with a relative and grew up never consciously coming to grips with that horrible episode. Now it’s caught back up with him at the very worst of times.

Just as Sander is trying to re-connect and get help from his former therapist, two of his patients are involved in a hideous murder. One woman is killed and her unborn baby is cut from her womb. The woman who apparently committed the crime, tricks Sander into believing she is actually psychotic. His misdiagnosis of her is only the beginning of a strange tale that twists and turns its way back and fourth in time, in locale, and in sanity or the lack of it. To reveal too much of the plot would blunt the impact of many surprises that the author has in store. Just note that along the way, readers will be coming face to face with members of Israel’s secretive Mossad, covert members of fanatical race cells, Nazi apologists, and a man to whom nothing is truly evil as long as it’s in the cause of Germany’s destiny and so-called Aryan purity. Before the novel’s end, Sander will be forced to make an agonizing decision that no man should have to make. But make it he must if he’s to maintain his sanity and protect his family.

Barnard’s storytelling style is rapid-fire. He moves from one incident to the next quickly and keeps the pace of his tale relentless. In some instances, he has a tendency to repeat exposition that has already been established; however it seldom slows the flow of the main plot and its tributaries.
At basically novella length, there’s little time or need for additional backstory, so Barnard charges forward with one harrowing development after another. If you like mysteries that engage, elucidate, and waste little time getting to a surprising resolution, chances are you’ll be intrigued by Philip Barnard’s Retribution.