Tag: crime

Book Review – The Injustice of Valor by Gary Corbin

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About the Book

When the cops and courts fail, The Redeemer exacts his own form of justice.

When the bodies of freed sex offenders turn up with increasing regularity in western Connecticut, the Clayton Police Department responds with a disinterested yawn.

Second-year cop Val Dawes doesn’t share the department’s apparent indifference to the trend of vigilante justice. But her warnings fall on deaf ears, especially after her jealous rivals in the department get her suspended on a bogus assault charge.

Then her best friend in the department, a trans woman named Shelby, goes missing under suspicious circumstances.

Can Val find her friend before she, too, falls victim to a deranged vigilante?

Format: ebook (365 pages) Publisher: Double Diamond Publishing
Publication date: 25th March 2025 Genre: Crime, Thriller

Find The Injustice of Valor on Goodreads

Purchase The Injustice of Valor from Amazon UK (Gary is keen to support independent bookshops and encourages readers to use alternatives to the big online retailers if they can. You can find more information on his website.)

My Review

The Injustice of Valor is the sixth book in the crime thriller series featuring Officer Valorie Dawes of the Clayton Police Department. I’ve read several of the previous books in the series – A Better Part of Valor, Mother of Valor and Under the Banner of Valor. Although this latest book can be enjoyed as a standalone, I’d really recommend reading the series from the beginning as Valorie has gone on quite a journey – personally and professionally – since the first book.

The author is not afraid to base a story around hard-hitting subjects – sex trafficking, right wing extremism, anti-abortion activism – and this book is no exception. You’ll get an idea from the opening chapter which you can read here. Sensitive readers should be warned there are some gruesome scenes.

Valorie achieved a notable success with the last case she was involved in but it hasn’t brought the prospect of her making detective any closer because of the intense competition for a small number of vacancies. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Valorie isn’t sure she has the ability to pass the test. And it would probably also mean leaving the WAVE (Women’s Anti-Violence Emergency) Squad. Tackling violence against women and girls is a subject she feels strongly about, not least because of her own personal experience.

Her achievements have also made her enemies within the force, either because they are jealous of her success or just downright misogynist. It results in her being set up and suspended from duty just as it becomes apparent there’s a serial killer on the loose.

Forced temporarily to hand in her badge and firearm she takes the opportunity to spend some time with her little brother Sammy and take up an invitation to stay with her friend Shelby in a cabin she and her boyfriend have rented close to the grounds of a large estate. The couple who live there definitely don’t welcome visitors, as their elaborate security system demonstrates, but their young son loves exploring the countryside around the estate. However, Valorie arrives to find Shelby missing, whereabouts unknown and becomes increasingly worried for her safety. We, the reader, know what’s happened to Shelby and it’s not nice at all. It’s clear we are dealing with a depraved, fanatical and utterly ruthless individual.

I had various suspicions about who the perpetrator might be but the author skilfully led me up several blind alleys. The tension definitely ramps up towards the end of the book with Valorie finding herself in a situation she seems unlikely to escape from. It’s times like this you need a knight in shining armour, or perhaps a small boy, to come to your aid.

The book is set in 2020 just at the outbreak of the Covid pandemic and the author deftly conjures up the uncertainty of that time when no-one really knew what the scale or impact of it would be. The sign this is no ordinary outbreak is beginning to appear with businesses closing and wearing a face mask becoming the norm. It’s really brought home to Valorie when she goes to the local hospital. ‘The scene at Mercy Hospital chilled her when she arrived. A semi-truck, parked outside the emergency room entrance, sported a makeshift sign – “Mobile Morgue” – with hazmat symbols posted all over the side. Gowned, masked medical workers pushed a gurney up the ramp, and she could tell it held a body.’ And it’s going to get even closer to home soon.

Valorie is a terrific leading character: resolute, resilient and intrepid. She’s a good friend, a dependable partner and someone whose stamina belies her short stature. She’s not without her demons but, to my mind, this just makes her someone you can’t help rooting for. The Injustice of Valor is an absorbing, gritty crime thriller and another great addition to the series. My thanks to the author for my digital review copy.

In three words: Gripping, suspenseful, dramatic
Try something similar: Death on the Thames by Alan Johnson

About the Author

Author Gary Corbin

Gary Corbin is an author and playwright in Camas, WA. Raised in a small town in New England, Gary has also lived in Louisiana (Geaux LSU Tigers!), Indiana (Go Hoosiers!), and Washington, DC.

Gary’s series feature page-turning plots, flawed but lovable protagonists, and bad guys you love to hate. His plays have enjoyed critical acclaim in regional and community theaters. Gary is a member of the Willamette Writers Group, The Writer’s Dojo, PDX Playwrights, and ALLi.

A homebrewer and coffee roaster, Gary loves to ski, cook, and watch his beloved Red Sox and Patriots. He hopes to someday train his dogs to obey. (Photo: Author website)

Connect with Gary
Website | Facebook | Bluesky

An excerpt from The Injustice of Valor by Gary Corbin

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Publication day is always an exciting time for an author and today it’s the turn of Gary Corbin whose latest crime novel, The Injustice of Valor, hits the bookshops today. I’m delighted to bring you an excerpt from the book, which is the sixth outing for Officer Valorie Dawes of the Clayton Police Department. I’ve read several of the previous books in the series – A Better Part of Valor, Mother of Valor and Under the Banner of Valor – and I’m looking forward to getting stuck into this one. (You can read my reviews by following the links from the titles.)

Gary is keen to support independent bookshops and to encourage readers to use alternatives to the big online retailers, including for ebooks and audiobooks. You can find more information on his website. Enough of the sales pitch, let’s find out more about the book…

About the Book

When the cops and courts fail, The Redeemer exacts his own form of justice.

When the bodies of freed sex offenders turn up with increasing regularity in western Connecticut, the Clayton Police Department responds with a disinterested yawn.

Second-year cop Val Dawes doesn’t share the department’s apparent indifference to the trend of vigilante justice. But her warnings fall on deaf ears, especially after her jealous rivals in the department get her suspended on a bogus assault charge.

Then her best friend in the department, a trans woman named Shelby, goes missing under suspicious circumstances.

Can Val find her friend before she, too, falls victim to a deranged vigilante?

Extract from The Injustice of Valor by Gary Corbin

The Wolf Moon ducked behind the clouds seconds after the power grid failed, plunging the small Berkshires town of Greenville, Connecticut into unexpected darkness. No home lights pierced the gloom. The seasoned veterans of year-round rural living, many of whom had already gone to bed, hadn’t yet switched over to their generators. The few still awake knew that these outages, so common in the mountains in winter, rarely lasted longer than a few minutes. Fewer still drove anywhere that late, so the winding roads like Torrington River Highway and Valley Park Drive remained unlit by glaring headlights.

It was the perfect time and place to dump a body.

The corpse splashed into the Torrington River’s swift current almost exactly midway between sunset and sunrise on the 14th of January, in the year 2020.

Stirred up by stiff winds and threatening rain, the river swallowed the body into its black depths within seconds, each crash of whitecaps against the surface an exclamation point to its haughty declaration: You are mine. Nothing but food for the fishes, more bones to litter its cluttered floor.

So it happened, anyway, in the imagination of The Redeemer, who dumped the body down the rocky embankment into the frothy cascades below. No time to wait around to see the fish devour the victim’s flesh. Unfortunate. To have seen the muscle and skin torn from bone would have been the evening’s crowning achievement. Ridding the planet of another sex offender who’d escaped justice, freed on some bullshit technicality argued by unethical lawyers, was a sight to be witnessed. Savored, even. Hell, the lawyers responsible for the perv’s freedom should join the fray.

Perhaps someday they would. In a perfect world, the event would be televised.

But not tonight. Tonight the world became a better place, with one less sicko to prey upon the innocent. One fewer person—or perhaps several—would risk the painful, humiliating experience of that almost unimaginable violation of their body.

Almost unimaginable. To the unlucky few, they were all too imaginable.

Unforgettable, even.

About the Author

Author Gary Corbin

Gary Corbin is an author and playwright in Camas, WA. Raised in a small town in New England, Gary has also lived in Louisiana (Geaux LSU Tigers!), Indiana (Go Hoosiers!), and Washington, DC.

Gary’s series feature page-turning plots, flawed but lovable protagonists, and bad guys you love to hate. His plays have enjoyed critical acclaim in regional and community theaters. Gary is a member of the Willamette Writers Group, The Writer’s Dojo, PDX Playwrights, and ALLi.

A homebrewer and coffee roaster, Gary loves to ski, cook, and watch his beloved Red Sox and Patriots. He hopes to someday train his dogs to obey. (Photo: Author website)

Connect with Gary
Website | Facebook | Bluesky