Hit the Ground Running
The Chain starts off heavy, fast, intense, and heart wrenching. Within the first eleven pages the entire novel is set and explained; leaving you sitting up with an open mouth and a heart beating twice as fast as it should. Within the first three chapters, a young girl is kidnapped, a mother’s cancer has returned, a state trooper is shot and the Chain has been introduced.
It was any other day for young Kylie. She was playing on her phone while waiting for the school bus when a van pulls up and she is kidnapped. All her mother has to do is follow the rules, pay a ransom, and of course, kidnap another kid. Only then will Kylie be returned home, safe and sound. The Chain is a self-policing kidnapping ring. One parent must kidnap another child in order to get their child back. If the Chain is broken and someone goes to the police or if you fail to kidnap another child, then you are killed and your child is killed and their parents are killed and it goes back as far as it needs to before it gets reset and the chain continues.
It is a work of genius, what McKinty has created for readers. The Chain is described as having been going for generations and once you are in the chain, you can never leave, unless they kill you; and they kill you using someone else who is already on the chain! The whole theory behind this blows my mind and terrifies me at the same time!
The Chain’s Rules
The first part of The Chain follows the main group of family as they navigate around the rules of the Chain. Rachel, the main mom, gets a call from another woman who has kidnapped Kylie, her daughter, in order to get her son back from the person or persons who kidnapped him. The woman lays down the guidelines, the rules, the ransom amount, the details of the Chain and what Rachel needs to do in order to get Kylie back.
The entire process is extremely real. It made me, as the reader, feel as though my own child had been kidnapped and I had to kidnap someone else’s kid in order to keep not only myself and my child alive, but other people on the Chain as well! It is an extensive exploration of morale and mental strength/acuity.
Anyways, while Rachel is running herself ragged trying to get all these things done, Kylie is proving to be a very smart and brave young girl. She even attempts an escape, although it doesn’t quite work out as it should have.
Rachel is allowed to bring in some help in the form of her ex brother-in-law and former marine, Pete. He is revealed to have a heroin addiction which at one or two points throughout the book cause a little hiccup in their carefully laid plans. Suffice it to say, Rachel and Pete kidnap another child and her parents kidnap another child, so Kylie is finally returned home.
After they reunite, many things go wrong and they have to fix a potential break in the chain before it happens and they all get killed. More carefully laid plans go awry before they get everything straightened back up and finally the feeling of relief is in front of them and they can begin to heal from the trauma of everything that happened and everything that went wrong.
The Monster In the Labyrinth
Let’s continue on to the second part of the book; the Monster in the Labyrinth. It begins with a cut chapter to the past, sometime in the late 1980’s. There are two children, twins; a boy and a girl. They are running around and playing with a group of other children and assorted animals. You get the hippie vibe, perhaps a little bit cult-ish, but it’s not gone into too much detail so your own imagination can have a run at creating the scene for you. Two older men appear looking for someone named Alicia. They find her and are looking for the kids. She gets killed, along with a handful of other people she was with. Eventually the men find the twins and haul them away.
Due to the title of part two and the dramatic scene that unfolded in that first chapter, I realized that this was a clue. It clued in to the potential that the Chain may not be quite as long as it is implied because I got the feeling that the twins are who is behind the Chain and maybe they even started it.
You cut back to the main characters handling the aftermath of what happened to them and what they did to survive the trauma. Rachel is having terrible nightmares, Kylie is hardly sleeping and messing the bed almost every night, and Pete is pretending that everything is getting better. Rachel has also undergone another surgery and chemo treatment to get rid of the cancer that came back.
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Harder to Get Back to Normal
Appearances are hard to keep up though and the people around them try to understand why there is so much fear and sadness and anxiety in each of them. Marty is Kylie’s father and ex-husband to Rachel and even though you want to hate him, you love him because he seems like a genuine good guy who is trying his hardest on all fronts; even after getting dumped via text by Tammy, his now ex-girlfriend. They are all handling the past as best as they could, but they all know that the Chain is tightening around them, slowing strangling them and killing them all.
Part two does a lot of going back and forth between the main characters and the twins I mentioned earlier. I love it. It keeps you on your toes and adds an element of intricacy, causing this book to step beyond the usual easy reading category that many crime or suspense novels slide into.
Let me just say, McKinty’s depiction of the twins is terrifying! They are super creepy and have murderous tendencies even at their super young age. I got the skin crawling sensation many times when reading the quick chapter that helped you shape the bad guys’ image in your head. It gave you even more power to despise the Chain and who they were.
Suffice it to say, the whole family begins unravelling. Kylie is doing suicide research. Pete is adding heroin back into his routine. Rachel is slowly fading away as her body fights the cancer off while the stress and pain causes her to wither. Marty has gotten a new girlfriend who is younger than the one before.
It all seems endless.
Until Rachel begins to make plans to take down the Chain once and for all.
The Endless Loop Keep Terrorizing
Along the way, Rachel makes some bad moves before bringing Pete into the plan. Marty remains oblivious to all of it which I personally think is both good and bad. They meet someone lower on the Chain who has a daughter who has been hospitalized because of what happened to her when she was kidnapped by the Chain. The father of that girl has nothing left to lose now, so he has been developing a secret software that could potentially figure out the location of the leaders of the Chain without them knowing.
If you are someone that makes connections and pays enough attention, the tidbits of information that McKinty provides you are perfectly placed to add suspicion. You think you are 100% sure that it is someone, but because of your surety you doubt yourself just enough so when the bomb is dropped in the form of another flashback with the twins, you almost cannot believe it!
The Chain Review Conclusion
Let me just say, so many bad things happen before this book is resolved. There are a few deaths you wish didn’t happen and so much twisting and uncertainty and heart break. I really don’t want to spoil it! I am struggling here, because I wanted this discussion blog to not worry about spoilers or revealing too much information, but if this is even slightly piquing your interest, Curious One, you need to take action now!
Adrian McKinty has created a world of pure genius with this book. Curious One, you have got to find this book and read it! The Chain deserves so much recognition and I am wordlessly pleased that I got it as a gift and read it almost immediately. The Chain has forever made a mark on my heart as one of my favorite suspense/crime novels. I need to relax my mind for a day so I don’t contaminate my next read with the emotion this book brought forth in me.
If I were to ever suggest an amazing read to someone, I would have to suggest The Chain. You absolutely must read it.
Until next time, Curious One, it’s time for me to read another book! You can always check out The Library for a complete list of books I have discussed, or you can see more of my suspense/thriller discussions!
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