#BookReview: Pack Dynamics (Book 1) by Julie Frost

It is a wild ride— as you’d expect with werewolves.

In the first five pages, our mostly main character, Ben Lockwood, recent veteran turned PI, gets kidnapped, shot and tortured after taking an industrial espionage case.

Who knew the world of biologics could be so vicious?

But when you are dealing with the ramifications of werewolves vampires and other denizens of the night being available for genetic manipulation, all bets are off. Especially when the lives of loved ones are at stake.

This is not the sort of book where you have to wonder who the bad guy is. We see this in the first five minutes of reading. But it is the kind of book where you wonder what the next twist is going to be.

It is a wild ride— as you’d expect with werewolves.

The Story

After months of being a POW in Afghanistan, Army Ranger Ben Lockwood is now a Private Investigator, and just wants a safe, boring life. With his boss (his girlfriend’s mother) on vacation, he takes an “easy” case of pharmaceutical espionage.

In short order, he’s caught in the crossfire of werewolf hunting to cure his dying vampire wife, a mad scientist, and himself. Ben’s blood is the key to the vampire's recovery, and the werewolf wants his blood, one way or another.

This is the beginning of a series, and reads something like an episode of Leverage with severely weakened plot armor. After the opening kidnapping is resolved, the action just keeps rolling as a beleaguered Biotech company is threatened with murder and mayhem, while they desperately try to figure out why. Then we find out that a chance meeting wasn’t so chancy, and saying no to an unreasonable request can have dire consequences.

Over time they coalesce into a team through adversity and nearly constant threats.

There are even some boardroom scenes towards the end but they are anything but dull.

This is the kind of book that grabs you by the throat and keeps shaking until the very end.

The Characters

While the plot is a very real thing, it is largely driven by a cast of vividly drawn characters. This first book is ultimately about how the group is brought together and becomes a team. Who thought Ben Lockwood’s employer Alex Jarrett, the Elon Musk of Biologics, would be tossed together Ben’s girlfriend/coworker Janni Miller. Janni is a Daphne personality but with more aplomb, steel in her spine, and demonstrated investigative ability.

Alex’s personal assistant, Megan Graham, has her own spicy personality. She reminds me of Pepper Pots with a VERY private life, complicated by secret, monthly Wolf transformations.

Last but not least, we have Ben, our PI Veteran who has some serious ongoing PTSD which is handled vividly throughout, though he gets introspective and over-reactive to those forces. Ben is handled with utmost skill— I only wanted to slap him (hard) twice in the book. Maybe three times if you count the flashback. It’s hard to get too upset at him because he is sympathetic steely and complex. He also goes through a very great deal, and I can forgive him for acting like it’s a lot— because it IS.

Even the villains are well drawn and vividly presented, rather like a Colombo episode. They are not mustache twirling villains, but definitely evil— for their decision making, brutality and definition of “acceptable risk” to others. But their motivations are more than understandable; they are almost sympathetic, if they weren’t so willing to destroy everything to get what they want.

The World

While this is a traditional “secret history” sort of world, it’s almost more like an open secret. Society won’t acknowledge it, the Supernaturals won’t openly talk about it, Because who wants crowds showing up with pitchforks, torches, and Molotov cocktails? The underground has a sense of what is going on.

All of this is focused in a few places in the LA Area. You can tell that Julie Frost has some experience with the area because she doesn’t cover any special monuments in particular— save a very nice park most people haven’t heard of.

Politics

Politics aren’t really covered in this book unless you count office politics or the mechanics of espionage.

Content Warning

There’s no described nudity (one shower scene and a reverse-wolf-shift). There are a couple of people dating each other, but all sex happens off screen. There might be some lightly described PDA. I didn’t notice a lot of “F” bombs (there may be some). The violence is vivid but not grotesquely lingered over. This is not slasher horror, but people get pretty badly hurt a number of times.

There are couple of scenes with suicidal ideation delved into pretty deeply, plus a number of scenes with non trivial mental distortion, ie. PTSD looked at from the inside. Plus the experiments that the main character experiences directly. Also, there are several runs of experiments on animals that go badly.

Who is this for?

This is for a fan of Larry Corriea, Jim Butcher or Declan Finn who wants to a industrial espionage bio-thriller with Werewolves, Vampires and mad science. There is a lot of action and violence, but the consequences are dealt with in depth. This is a thinking man’s action piece, with thoughtful attention to the cost.

Why buy it?

Buy it because it is chock full of great vivid characters, intense action, deep introspection and portrays the biotech associated with supernatural creatures in a real and wonderful way. This is a binging book that haunts you weeks after you’ve read it. Yes it is worth buying all extant books before reading so you don’t have to wait around for the next one!