'CLOSING COSTS'......EXTREME HOME UN-IMPROVEMENT.....

 Closing Costs by Bracken MacLeod  (2021)     This just published thriller, of which BQ got an advanced copy of a few months back,  seems like a combo of a lost chunk of 'Pulp Fiction' (minus the snappy dialogue) and a house-flipping episode on one of those home improvement cable channels.

              So what we have here is an attractive young couple, newly upscale, who move out to a spacious suburban home in the middle of freakin' nowhere. Their upscale-ness comes from a vast stash of ill-gotten funds they've stumbled into......and illegally helped themselves to.   (At this point, the reader would start silently muttering..."this will not bode well...")

              And sure enough it doesn't.  The new house, exhaustively refurbished by the previous owners, proves to be ground zero for a whole variety of brutal home invaders.. They may have varying motives and agendas, but they've got this much in common - they're all lethal, violent, well armed, short-tempered. and stage their home invasions more or less at the same time.

 
             Wow, talk about bad timing.....and the nearest neighbor is away on vacation.

             What a bummer for our young couple.......whom, as you might expect, endure chapter after chapter of terrifying, extreme physical punishment at the hands of  their variety of tormentors.

               While the first half of the book engages in some backstory time-shifting, by the time you're halfway into it , the story becomes a drawn out survive-against-impossible-odds ordeal.  And the last third settles into a very, very long hunt-chase-fight-escape duel that might leave you as exhausted as the participants. 

              We'll have to admit though, author MacLeod had us racing through these chapters to see how things go for this hapless couple, even if these characters aren't particularly sympathetic or well-developed.  His suspense and action sequences  do the job of making your heart race faster. 

               As long as you don't expect all sorts of twists and surprises (it's not that kind of thriller)) "Closing Costs" is moderately entertaining.  And for anyone who loves a prolonged, extended and gory showdown with an especially loathsome, villain, then this book does deliver that, with a vengeance..3 stars (***)