Michael Kelso's Blog: That writer's blog - Posts Tagged "prison"

Ho, ho, ho, it’s time to stuff your face with turkey, take a nap, wake up and spend all your money on gifts no one wants.
Wait, what?
Instead of that, why not buy the book readers on your list something they might actually like and support some amazing indie authors at the same time?
So to help you out with that, I’ve created a list of indie author books that I highly recommend, separated by genre.
So in no certain order.
Psychological thriller/mystery –The Consequence of Loyalty
A State Of Despair
Serial Killer with a twist - Hidden Danger: A Chilling Psychological Thriller
Crime Noir/Psychological thriller - Dark White
Paranormal Mystery/ Suspense thriller - Bits & Pieces Pieces & Parts
Zombie/post apocalyptic thriller - This Land of Monsters
Serial killer thriller/horror - The Eighteenth
Urban fiction/Suspense - Cove Valley
Fantasy adventure/military - The Siege of Sternz Shadows of the Past

And if you're in the mood for a crime novel set in a prison - One on One
Or a young adult book about football - Endzone

Merry Christmas and Happy reading!

Survival on Walker Mountain: Life Behind the WallThis book was a little hard to get into at the start but I think it’s because I was a corrections officer and already knew many of the ins and outs he describes in the opening chapters.
I appreciated the way he went about describing the intricacies of working at a prison. He started out with five rookies and followed them through their training. In this way, he was able to show the reader what it’s like to be a corrections officer without a lot of exposition.
Even so, the training sessions were a little long, and the really interesting, ‘can’t put this book down until I find out what happens’ part wasn’t until he started to incorporate the inmates’ stories in the narrative.
Once that happens, this book is a runaway locomotive. I devoured chapter after chapter wanting to know how it turned out.
Murder, mayhem, extortion, drugs, blackmail, it’s all here. The story centers around a drug ring inside the prison and how they try to root it out. Along the way, bad things happen and the rookies have to make a choice about how they’re going to handle them.
If you’re looking for a lot of tear shedding, you won’t find it in this book. The author treats it precisely like a corrections officer would. Clean up the mess and find out what happened so we can prevent it next time.
Strangely enough, the emotional story comes from the inmates’ side of the bars. When we’re brought along for a character’s story that involves some soul-searching and evaluating of the nature of his crime.
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s really like to work in a prison, this book comes about as close as any fictional story I’ve ever read.
Once it gets going, it’s a serious page-turner that I would recommend to anyone except the kiddos. Obviously, due to the graphic nature of prison life, that is very well portrayed, this book is not for the younger set.