The Reign of the Kingfisher by T. J. Martinson is a superhero novel -- sort of. The Kingfisher was a superhero from Chicago or a vigilante, depending on your perspective, and he's been dead for 30 years. A masked gunman has taken hostages and demands that the police admit that they faked the death of the Kingfisher or the hostages will be killed. Three people’s stories become interwoven. A retired journalist who used to cover the Kingfisher, a hacker involved in an anarchist movement and a disgraced police officer all work to save the hostages for different reasons. Together they circle the truth coming closer and closer to discovering both what happened 30 years ago and what is happening in the present.

As these three pursue the truth, each with a unique motivation, and begin to find out what really happened to the Kingfisher, they also begin to examine who the Kingfisher was and what he meant to the city. Was he a hero? Was he a vigilante? Or was it something more complicated. Getting to the truth means uncovering complicated secrets that maybe should have stayed buried. Will they figure out the truth and will it be in time to save the hostages?

The story spends most of its time in the present but there is enough time spent in the past to learn a little bit about where the Kingfisher may have come from and what life was like during the brief time that he operated in the city. It's true that his methods were violent, confined mostly to criminals, but was it justice or revenge?

As the individuals continue tracking down what really happened to the Kingfisher, they are forced to re-examine how their own lives have been shaped. The computer hacker Ren, for example, had a Protestant upbringing which taught her to be industrious and has left her uncomfortable with downtime or inaction. “Even though she considered herself an intellectually curious agnostic, you could sooner lose your fingerprints then you could your upbringing.”.

The mystery here is the driving force in the plot but it is the characters which really elevate this book. The retired journalist, the suspended cop and the hacker are all complicated individuals who do a serious amount of self-reflection as they investigate what happened to the Kingfisher. But it is the Kingfisher himself who is the most intriguing character. He has abnormal strength, superhuman senses and a streak of violence which is imperfectly contained. Most interesting is the inner turmoil that makes him question his own actions, question his own motivations and ultimately question whether or not he deserves to live.

The Reign of the Kingfisher defies easy classification. It is not strictly a mystery, not strictly a superhero story and not strictly a thriller. It is, however, a highly entertaining and thoughtful novel. TJ Martinson asks some tough questions and rather than answer them all he gives you several different looks at how to answer them for yourself.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes novels that are a little complicated and don't follow traditional genre lines.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher. ( )

The legacy of Chicago’s very own, mostly forgotten, superhero suddenly becomes center stage when a gunman demands the police come clean on the hero’s supposed death or innocent people will die. T.J. Martinson’s debut novel, The Reign of the Kingfisher, follows several characters attempting to stop the gunman in their separate ways before coming together and using the information they collected to help stop the gunman.

Early in the morning of a soon-to-be hot Chicago summer day, a retired journalist is awakened by a call from Chicago Chief of Police and sees a video of a gunman claiming that the CPD helped the Kingfisher fake his death and demand they come clean before killing a hostage and threatening several more with the same fate. Recognizing the victim as someone he interviewed for his book about the superhero, the journalist gets concerned about others which gets the attention of a CPD detective who has a suspended CPD officer look into the journalist’s list. Meanwhile a hacktivist is angry that the gunman is claiming to be a part of her group and to stop him hacks the CPD database to get a medical exam of the Kingfisher case to prove he might be alive only for the gunman to kill another hostage. After several up and downs, the four characters come together and are able bring their talents and discovers together to bring resolution to the situation.

This mystery with a fantasy twist begins with an intriguing premise and some interesting flashbacks, halfway through the book I came up with three possible ways it could play out or in various combinations which made me look forward to see how things would end. However, while I correctly picked the villain and partially got the ending scenario right that doesn’t mean I was satisfied with the book. While the three main and two (or three) secondary characters all came out of central casting, that didn’t make them bad as they started off interesting and developed well. However they either stopped developing to become stale or began doing and saying things that was completely out of the blue from where they had been heading (or both), which undercut the quality of the storytelling. In addition some of the minor subplots, in particular the Police Chief’s, were detrimental to the overall book once it was over.

The Reign of the Kingfisher has a great premise, but unfortunately it doesn’t really achieve its potential. While T.J. Martinson might just be beginning a long career, his debut novel is a mixture of good and bad that in the end makes the reader think about how good a book it could have been.

I received this book via Goodreads First Reads program in exchanged for an honest review. ( )