Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (Paperback – 8 April 2025)
Series: Kurt Argento – Book Two
Length: 307 pages
My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Rising thriller author Adam Plantinga follows up his excellent first novel with the intense and highly addictive sequel, Hard Town, and outstanding book I read so damn quickly.
Readers of this blog may remember that at the start of 2025 I had the great pleasure of reading a particularly epic thriller novel, The Ascent. The debut novel from new author Adam Plantinga, The Ascent was a fantastic novel that followed a former cop, Kurt Argento, who finds himself stuck in the middle of a brutal prison riot, which forces him to fight through several levels of a deadly killers and criminals. I had an amazing time with The Ascent (it was one of my favourite debuts of 2024), and I have been keen to read more from Plantinga for a while, especially as he intended to write more about his original protagonist. After highlighting it as a cool upcoming novel early last year, I finally got a chance to read Hard Town and I’m glad I did.
Plot Synopsis:
When a plea for help sends retired Detroit cop Kurt Argento to the small desert town of Fenton, Arizona things immediately don’t appear to be as they seem, and he finds himself unravelling secrets that want to stay hidden and questioning his own moral compass.
After having survived a deadly prison break, ex-Detroit cop Kurt Argento is ready for some quiet. Still working through his grief over the passing of his wife, Argento finds himself house-sitting for a friend with his loyal companion, Hudson, a Chow Chow-Shepard mix. It’s a simple life, picking up odd jobs here and there, but it’s one that Argento is content to live.
Then Kristin Reed shows up with her young son, Ethan, and begs Argento to help find her missing husband… and Argento tells her he’d just be in the way. He’s no investigator, not anymore. He’s a handyman who fixes fences. But he’s not one to ignore his gut feeling when something is wrong. After an attempt to talk with Kristin more in the next town over, just to find her and her son missing as well, Argento starts to notice that Fenton, Arizona is more than meets the eye.
First there’s the large, overly equipped public safety team complete with specialized tactics and sophisticated weaponry. Then there’s the unusual financial boosting of failing small businesses by the U.S. government. And finally, there’s one man with no name who seems to have control over this town in an unprecedented way.
Argento finds himself unravelling not just the truth behind the disappearance of a family, but a conspiracy that’s taken a whole town to cover up. But Fenton, Arizona is going to push him further than he’s ever had to go. And along the way, he may just lose a part of himself as well. Because justice isn’t as black and white as Argento would like to believe.
Hard Town was a great second novel from Plantinga, who follows up his debut with a highly compelling sequel I had an outstanding time with. Loaded with striking action, an excellent over-the-top story and a gritty protagonist, Hard Town was an amazing novel that is worth checking out.
Plantinga pulls together an excellent plot for Hard Town, which I felt served as an excellent continuation of the protagonist’s personal journey, while also working well as a standalone story with its own distinctive plot. Reintroducing protagonist Kurt Argento as a battered survivor with some infamy behind him after the events of The Ascent, Hard Town sees him get dragged back into trouble when a desperate woman begs him to investigate the disappearance of her husband from the town of Fenton, Arizona. Despite his misgivings, Argento eventually agrees to help, only to discover that the woman and her young son have gone missing. Searching for answers in Fenton, he discovers a surprisingly well-equipped police force of former soldiers, while a mysterious genius is holding court in town. Plantinga sets up this unusual scene extremely well in the first third of Hard Town, and you soon become quite engrossed in uncovering the full mystery, especially as things are just about to kick off in all the wrong ways.
It’s around this point that the entire tone of Hard Town changes dramatically, and Argento finds himself caught up in a deadly battle for survival. After an intense extended sequence, you follow Argento as he attempts to uncover the true secrets of Fenton while also searching for his own brand of justice. This involves an interesting investigation arc, followed up by a dangerous plan to gain allies and resources. Plantinga perfectly paces out the second half of Hard Town, drawing you into Argento’s plans before hitting you with the big confrontation. This final part of Hard Town is extremely brutal, with multiple deadly fights and encounters. Plantinga throws in a couple of good twists here, as well as a lot of over-the-top deaths, and you will find yourself extremely hooked. Everything wraps up in a satisfying, dark ending, with the protagonist resolving the story at a cost, and thriller fans will come away happy with how Hard Town turned out. I personally loved this well-planned out and compelling narrative, and I ended up powering through the entirety of Hard Town in only a couple of days.
You can see that Plantinga has improved as an author since his first book, as he has done a good job moving the plot away from the prison setting of the first book into a sprawling adventure throughout Arizona. Hard Town initially had a bit of a slower pace to it, which I felt helped to build tension and allowed for a stronger, more character-focused read. The use of an underlying mystery to drive the initial plot and increase tension and interest was a great choice by Plantinga, and it allowed the author to take his time to set up the story. Once things do kick off, Plantinga does not hold back, bringing in a series of intense confrontations and over-the-top moments to raise the stakes and sate the action fans. Plantinga makes sure there is a gritty realism to all the action, as Plantinga provides detailed depictions of event, amping up the impact of events. I also quite enjoyed the multiple realistic depictions of police techniques and procedure, as Plantinga pulls from his own extensive personal knowledge of law enforcement to enhance his story. All this results in a powerful tone for Hard Town, which intensifies the action and the fantastic focus on the characters.
While there is a lot of carnage in this thriller, Hard Town isn’t all action, as Plantinga adds some nuance to the plot, especially around protagonist Kurt Agento’s motivations and the morality of the antagonists. Argento, who the author expertly reintroduces in this sequel, continues to develop from the angry figure we were introduced to at the start of The Ascent. Now somewhat calmer, Argento is forced back into the life of violence when pushed in the most dramatic of ways, although Plantinga continues to portray him as having a little more restraint, while also moralising a little more over his actions and desire for revenge. The author works in some interesting flaws and personal concerns for the protagonist to deal with. Despite certain moral quandaries Plantinga includes in the plot, there is not a moment that you aren’t on the side of the protagonist as he seeks justice, especially after a certain scene. The clever and usually over-the-top ways that Argento attempted to resolve the situations he found himself in also draws the reader to his side, and there were some very memorable moments in this plot as Argento attempted to get justice.
While most of the book’s focus was on Argento as protagonist, Plantinga does include some interesting supporting characters, especially in the book’s antagonists. These antagonists are a group of mysterious soldiers who have taken over policing in the small town of Fenton as part of a larger mission. Employed to ruthlessly defend their objective and keep the town in order, these characters do some terrible things and there are some true monsters amongst them. However, Plantinga includes a couple of conflicted figures in their midst, and their varied morality becomes an interesting plot point, especially when Argento seeks his revenge. The objective of these soldiers and their government agent handler adds in some interesting moral conflicts to the plot, especially as they try to balance the need for dark actions with the overall objective of the mission they believe in. I enjoyed how Plantinga balanced these morally grey characters by also including a completely irredeemable character as Hard Town’s main antagonist. The sinister mastermind behind the whole operation in Fenton, this initially unnamed antagonist was delightfully over-the-top, and Plantinga had fun writing in his sense of superiority and evil nature. If anything, the author made him too outrageously evil, as this character came across as a parody of an arrogant intellectual, but I still had fun seeing this antagonist in action, especially when confronted by the more serious Argento. All these characters add a lot to Hard Town’s story, and I felt that Plantinga’s character work was a lot more impactful in this sequel.
Adam Plantinga showcases his improvement as a writer in this excellent second novel, Hard Town. An amazing and nuanced thriller novel that balances an emotionally charged plot with some outstanding action, Hard Town was a highly addictive read that I found near impossible to put down. I really had an amazing time with this sequel, and I look forward to reading more from Plantinga going forward, especially as the third book in this series, Dark Country, just came out.