Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Book Reviewed by:
Peggy Kurkowski
Buy This Book
When a high-security prison fails, a down-on-his luck cop and the governor's daughter are going to have to team up if they're going to escape in this "jaw-dropping, authentic, and absolutely gripping" (Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author) debut thriller from Adam Plantinga, whose first nonfiction book Lee Child praised as "truly excellent."
Kurt Argento, an ex-Detroit street cop who can't let injustice go—and who has the fighting skills to back up his idealism.
If he sees a young girl being dragged into an alley, he's going to rescue her and cause some damage.
When he does just that in a small corrupt Missouri town, he's brutally beaten and thrown into a maximum-security prison.
Julie Wakefield, a grad student who happens to be the governor's daughter, is about to take a tour of the prison. But when a malfunction in the security system releases a horde of prisoners, a fierce struggle for survival ensues.
Argento must help a small band of staff and civilians, including Julie and her two state trooper handlers, make their way from the bottom floor to the roof to safety.
All that stands in their way are six floors of the most dangerous convicts in Missouri.
Excerpt
The Ascent
Argento took in the group in front of him. Two men in suits who looked like cops: one Black and middle-aged, with a solid frame; the other younger, white, and lean, with a ratty mustache. Next to them was a skinny guy with graying hair in a cheap brown suit. He looked skittish. Rounding them out was a woman, midtwenties with long brown hair tied back. She came in at about five-seven with a triathlete build and wore a plain gray sweatshirt and running shoes. Not staff, Argento reasoned, because she wasn't wearing any kind of uniform. Then he saw she was holding a notebook. Some kind of tourist. On a tour that had just gone very much awry.
Everyone but Argento started talking at once, Argento's group trying to explain what they had just witnessed and the men in the other camp demanding answers.
"We have a homicide scene we need to lock down in medical," LeMaines said. "Check that, two homicide scenes."
"What? So why isn't ... why aren't you there instead of here?" Brown ...
The Ascent stands out not just for its ingenious plot—a winning page-turning equation by itself—but for Argento, a complicated man whose fearlessness is merely the mask for his deep, inconsolable pain. Amid chaos, memories of the woman he loved "so fiercely it scared him" come unbidden. Plantinga creates a love story in retrospect that resonates with the reader and makes Argento's glib quips an obvious band-aid for his numbed existence without her. For this epic ascent out of hell and into the heavens, Plantinga channels Dante in Argento's quest for redemption and hope: for Julie, the others and ultimately, himself...continued
Full Review
(705 words)
(Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski).
Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author of I Will Find You
The Ascent is jaw-dropping, authentic, and absolutely gripping. James Rollins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Kingdom of Bones
Adam Plantinga's debut thriller, The Ascent, is a nail-biting ride out of Hell itself. It's Dante's Inferno—but with gangs, corruption, bone-breaking brawls, and a kick-ass, determined police officer struggling through it all to save another. It reads with raw authenticity and brutal honesty. Don't miss this debut of a new crime-thriller star! Lou Berney, Edgar award-winning author of November Road
Damn! I had to hold onto this one for dear life. The Ascent is a ferociously propulsive thriller. Plantinga creates a haunted house of horrors that's utterly convincing, while at the same time keeping the focus on complex, layered, and engaging characters. An outstanding debut crime novel.In The Ascent, Adam Plantinga imagines what it would be like to climb through six levels of a prison in utter chaos: cell doors opening, guards hiding or dead, inmates murdering each other and so much worse. It does not require fiction, however, to imagine these hellscapes: history has many examples of such mayhem. Below are two of America's deadliest prison uprisings.
Attica, 1971
One of the most famous occurred over five days in September 1971 at the Attica State Correctional Facility in upstate New York. The prison's chronic overcrowding and abysmal living conditions (e.g., once-a-week showers and one roll of toilet paper per prisoner per month, among other indignities) erupted into violence on September 9 when inmates ...
If you liked The Ascent, try these:
by Shane Bauer
Published 2019
A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course of our country's history.
by Curtis Dawkins
Published 2018
In this stunning debut collection, Curtis Dawkins, an MFA graduate and convicted murderer serving life without parole, takes us inside the worlds of prison and prisoners with stories that dazzle with their humor and insight, even as they describe a harsh and barren existence.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
