4.5

Book source ~ NetGalley

A Fourth of July parade in Jericho Falls is interrupted by something horrifying and the Sinclair family is in the middle of it. People are dying and weird shit expert Ben Walker is called in to contain the situation. But this…thing is already out of hand and it’s only going to get worse. Ben really has his work cut out for him this time.

This story starts out with a bang and doesn’t let up until the end. It’s the stuff of nightmares with horror, science, bioterrorism, suspense and thriller all rolled up into an awful scenario. After the Pandora incident in the last book, Ben has been sidelined by his higher ups and he’s been left out of all things DARPA for nine months. But then as he’s going camping with his son he gets a call, but not from his old boss. From his new one. Or is she? Ben’s not sure, but there’s shit happening in the US and he needs to get there and get it under control. He needs to intercept Maeve Sinclair before anyone else does and bring her in where they can contain her before anyone else dies. Quite a tall order even for Ben, but he tackles it as best he can. When he runs into Maeve he feels like he may already be too late to save her. However, there is more than a biochemical reaction going on with her. Something else is there, inside her, and it’s getting stronger. What. The. Hell?!

Having read Ararat and The Pandora Room, I had an inkling of what Ben would be up against - weird shit that is extremely dangerous. The story is super-fast paced and the characters are well-fleshed out. The tension is palpable, the suspense is the edge-of-your-seat, fingernail-biting kind, and the horror, well, it’s nightmare inducing. Eeeeeee! Seriously, this story is all kinds of fucked up. I highly recommend it!

I have never read anything by this author before and I was addicted from beginning to end. I could NOT put this book down. Imagine you see a horrific car crash. The person gets out of the car and they are shot multiple times. Then they start touching people and the people instantly die. It’s a rapidly spreading pandemic of death. What can they do to stop it. What would you do to stop it if the person infected was someone you loved? They still act like themselves...  I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Right out of the gate, RED HANDS rockets and careens all over the place, until BAM! It's all over before you even know what hit you!

It's July 4th and in a small New Hampshire town, people are celebrating by putting on a parade. Everything's hunky dory, until a car drives right into the crowd and takes out several people. During the ensuing panic, many witness the car's driver getting out of the vehicle and start touching people. Unfortunately, he appears to have some kind of sickness, because everyone he touches drops dead. One parade attendee, Maeve, takes a baseball bat to the guy and takes him out, but not before he touches her. She seems to be fine and immediately goes to check on her family, but when she touches them, they die too. Will Maeve survive this contagion? What IS the contagion? What the heck is going on? You'll have to read this to find out!

RED HANDS is the third book in a series that started with ARARAT. Ben Walker is the connecting thread between all three books, but each book does stand alone, so one could read this and not be lost. Ben Walker is a likable man; he's brave, he's smart, he's adventurous. As a character, he's really unforgettable. He's not perfect, but even his flaws, (and the fact that he recognizes his flaws), make him someone the reader can really root for.

Golden writes strong women. Some are powerful, wise and evil, others are spunky, wholesome and brave. Some are heterosexual, some are not...either way, women are represented in clear and realistic ways; I admire that and enjoy it in my fiction. (We don't usually see women in his books head down to the basement in their nightgowns, investigating noises, you know what I'm saying?)

I don't want to spoil anything by getting into the plot but I can say this was a tension-filled story, that turned my weekend reading plans into....well, just this book. I rarely say this, but RED HANDS was un-put-downable!

Highly recommended!

Available on December 8th, but you can pre-order here: https://amzn.to/3pQXTzT

*Thanks to St. Martin's Press, NetGalley and the author for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest feedback. This is it!

One seemingly ordinary 4th of July, a driver crawls out of his car and proceeds to attack everyone around him … and everyone he touches, mysteriously dies within instants. However, in a desperate attempt to save her loved ones, Maeve Sinclair tries to stop him—only to become a carrier of the same touch of death. Realizing that she herself is now a walking bioweapon, she flees to mountains. Now government agencies, research teams, and her sister are in a race against the clock to find her. 

Christopher Golden's Red Hands is an eerily-timed thriller about physical contact bringing about death. I found myself empathizing with Maeve’s loneliness and guilt and I found it both heartbreaking and interesting to get her POV as a host of the sickness. 

However, the more the “Red Hands” sickness is explained, the less satisfactory the explanation becomes. The plot twist is dropped halfway through with little-to-no-foreshadowing, making it feel unearned and anti-climactic. It felt out of the blue to me. I wish the big reveal had occurred later in the story with more build up in order to leave a greater impact on readers.  

All and all, Red Hands succeeds more as a heart-pounding and emotional survival thriller than it does as a well-thought-out contagion story.

Red Hands, an action thriller book, was a solid 4 stars. 
Ben Walker is back on the job after a 4th of July parade ends up in disaster- a worker from the Garland Mountain Labs not only plows through the crowd at the parade but ends up killing people by his touch alone. Local woman Maeve stops the killings but by coming into contact with this man (and survives), she fears the repercussions and flees. Ben Walker has his work cut out for him- he must not only find Maeve but also find out what the Garland Mountain Labs has unleashed. 
Red Hands was an entertaining and fast paced book. Well -developed characters and an entertaining plot makes it a must read. This is the third book in the series and I’ve honestly enjoyed all of them. Highly recommend to fans of fiction, action and thriller books. Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I mean.......This book starts with a bang and DOES NOT STOP.

Death by touch - scientific testing gone wrong - contamination - infection - a woman hiding from everyone so she doesn't kill everything/every one.

It's all there.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This is the third book in the Ben Walker series by Christopher Golden and I'll go ahead and say from the start that I don't believe you need to have read the others to enjoy this one. There are references to the other books but nothing of substance that you're going to need that's not explained. This is its own thing 


This book dives right into the action. The first chapter centers on Maeve who is attending a July 4th parade with her family. During the parade, a car crashes through a barricade and through the crowd. Maeve sees her friends and family run down and races to confront the man in the car. When he emerges from his car, he touches some other pedestrians and they immediately die. When Maeve brains the guy with a baseball bat, she accidentally touches him. She feels whatever was in him, rush into her and she flees into the nearby mountains to avoid hurting people. As the dust settles, black helicopters and people in hazmat suits invade the town. Clearly something shady is happening.



Ben Walker has messed up. No one wants anything to do with him. He works with DARPA as a weird stuff expert but he's on leave after his last mission. Suddenly, as he's taking his son on a trip, he's recalled to investigate the tragedy and to find Maeve. Walker is dropped into town just as quarantine is called locking down the town. Walker quickly discovers that he's not the only one looking for Maeve. What follows is a race against time to find Maeve, discover what's wrong with her, and how to stop it.


This is a must-read book in a must-read series for me but like I said above, you don't need to read the other books to enjoy this one. If that summary strikes your fancy, dive in here, you'll be fine. I love the characters in this book, especially Walker, who strikes a great tone of I don't really want to be here but I'm going to make the best of it and be a badass while I'm here. He's wicked smart and funny and you can tell that Golden really knows this character and has fun writing him. I also loved the "small town coming together to overcome the odds" feel that this book has. While the conflict in this book is on the larger scale the setting brings it back down to a personal level and that makes the experience truly special. 


As for why it's not a five star read for me, there is a chunk of the book that I found boring and repetitive and while the rest of the book definitely made up for it, there was a small chunk of the book that I didn't enjoy as much. Small gripes but enough for me to knock off a star. This is absolutely a must-read for any fan of horror thrillers.

The synopsis  of this book sounded amazing, and to be honest it wasn’t at all what I expected. I was hoping for a different story here but this one was good. 

I didn’t realize when getting this book that it was a part of a series. I don’t feel like I was missing anything expect maybe some background on the main characters personal relationship with his own family. This could easily be read as a standalone. 

This book will suck you in I read it in a few hours and put off feeding my family to finish it. This is well written and not too wordy. The story flows nicely and you are invested in the characters. 

I received this book in exchange for my honest review.

A man drives into a crowded street full of parade goers and that’s not even close to the worst way people will die that day. Fast-paced and horror-filled, Red Hands is a reminder that as bad as nature can be, man always tries to harness it for evil.

I received a copy of "Red Hands" from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review and I am excited I had the opportunity to read it before publication. "Red Hands" is a fantastic book that keeps readers on the edge of their seats. This particular book is number three in the Ben Walker series and this is the first book of the series I have actually read. Hopefully I didn't miss to much of the storyline. I feel as though the story carried itself and I maybe missed out on some of the character development in relation to Ben Walker and a few references to some of the plotlines from the past books; but overall I really enjoyed "Red Hands" even if I missed some of the back story. I definitely now want to read the first two books of the series titled "Ararat", and "The Pandora Room".

At the beginning of this story we are introduced to Maeve who has returned to her hometown of Jericho Falls. She quickly learns that everything is about to change. When a madman goes on a killing rampage in his car the town residents begin to die. After crashing his car his killing is not complete as he then starts to kill more town residents by simply touching them. They become infected with a virus and die within minutes of being touched. Maeve becomes infected but she survives and learns she is now the carrier of the virus and infects those who she touches.

Maeve makes a run for the woods and starts the fight of her life. She must now fight against the virus trying to overtake her while being preyed upon by police, soldiers, and government officials. She has to decide who she is going to trust and how she is going to make it back home. Enter Ben Smith, the star of the story. He races against the clock to rescue Maeve before she is found by the enemy. One thing for sure, is that no one is safe.

"Red Hands" is a fun, captivating book that kept me intrigued from start to finish. I love books that keep building on the story as it progresses and this one does not disappoint. I really enjoy stories that focus on infections and diseases and "Red Hands" takes this genre to a whole new level. I definitely recommend this book for those readers who like this type of story as well. The story offers an imaginative world for readers who enjoy the unexpected, gruesome horrific descriptions, and an excellent plotline.

Christopher Golden sure knows how to grab a reader and pull them through an anxiety-laden, must-know-what-happens-next journey. Whew! There is something to be said for a book that can make me forget about the world, play a movie in my head while I read, and simply tell a darn good story.

Golden has a knack for storytelling. His character development, clean prose, and a great sense of pacing makes RED HANDS an enjoyable read. There are hints that this book connects to two previous novels with his character Walker, but readers will have no trouble reading this as a standalone; that was the case with me as well.

It's clear that Golden has spent time on research. There wasn't anything that pulled me out of the story or caused me to be unable to suspend disbelief. As someone who really enjoys horror, I think other readers of the macabre will appreciate the darkness in this book. There are some truly anxiety-riddled and gory scenes; by the last 1/4 of the book I was simultaneously revulsed and having a blast.

I think a good variety of readers will enjoy this fun read. I recommend it for fans of suspense, horror, thrillers, and quick/engaging reads.

I couldn't read this book. Entire chapters are missing (character end a chapter in one location and start in another and refer to a previous conversation/event that wasn't in the book). Or... the book is so poorly written that entire scenes are missing that create huge issues in plot.

I read this via Netgalley E-ARC. Point of note, I managed to miss that this was book #3 in a series, oops? 

That said, this was an entertaining and fast-paced read and I didn't feel like I missed anything having not read the first two books in the series. 

I rated it 3.5 stars because while it was fast-paced and engaging it wasn't quite what I expected going in. The medical stuff was enough to keep my attention, and while the characters didn't feel particularly rich I did care about them enough to wonder what was going to happen and keep reading!

All in all, a solid book and probably even better if you have read the rest of the series!

Meet Maeve. Maeve and her family are at a 4th of July parade in Jericho Falls. Out of no where, a car comes racing down the street heading towards the parade and the onlooking crowd. What the heck is going on, why is there a car speeding down the road during a parade, and why are they not slowing down or stopping? Horror and terror ensue as the car keeps up speed and strikes several in the crowd. Many are killed as a result.

Once the man in the vehicle gets out he comes into contact with several other people, that strangely die as soon as they are touched by his hand. As if that isn't strange and intriguing enough, theis strange "power" gets transferred to Maeve herself, and then she finds herself fleeing into the woods knowing people will be after her.

I enjoyed how fast paced this novel was and the intrigue and mystery around what the heck was going on to cause people to die from a simple touch. I very much enjoyed Ben Walker's character, he was very interesting and hard nosed and I loved how good he was at his job. After finding out this is the 3rd novel featuring Ben Walker's character, I definitely want to read the other novels featuring him as well.

What unfolds is a major search for Maeve - Ben Walker, her sister, her sister's girlfriend, and her dad, not to mention several others are all out looking for Maeve. Who will be the one to find her? Is her life in danger if the wrong people find her first?

I also enjoyed how the novel was told from various different POV's. Parts are told from Maeve's POV, parts are told from her father Ted's POV, some from her sister Rose's POV and parts from Walker's POV. It adds to the dynamic and intrigue of the story as it all unfolds and I loved it.

A definite must read that I recommend you add to your TBR now!

Holy Crap, this is intense.  

Red Hands doesn’t hesitate before throwing you into a read that manages to be action-packed, terrifying and heartbreaking!  I loved every page of this.

I made the mistake of starting this before bed and ended up sleeping way too late – I had to get up for work the next morning.  But hey, no worries, right?  Except that the book was still on my mind and I ended up reading and was LATE to work.  But see…I didn’t care.  I had to read this one.  It was that good.

And I simply loved the reason behind everything.  No spoilers here.  I’ll just say that the author gave a wonderful little gift to horror readers with exactly what was happening here.

This is simply a fantastic read.  And I’m hanging onto it because I’m going to want to read it again!

Five very well deserved stars!

*ARC Provided via Net Galley

Red Hands by Christopher Golden is a superb read! An engrossing read and page turner well worth the time spent.

This is the third book in the Ben Walker series by Christopher Golden and I'll go ahead and say from the start that I don't believe you need to have read the others to enjoy this one. There are references to the other books but nothing of substance that you're going to need that's not explained. This is its own thing 


This book dives right into the action. The first chapter centers on Maeve who is attending a July 4th parade with her family. During the parade, a car crashes through a barricade and through the crowd. Maeve sees her friends and family run down and races to confront the man in the car. When he emerges from his car, he touches some other pedestrians and they immediately die. When Maeve brains the guy with a baseball bat, she accidentally touches him. She feels whatever was in him, rush into her and she flees into the nearby mountains to avoid hurting people. As the dust settles, black helicopters and people in hazmat suits invade the town. Clearly something shady is happening.



Ben Walker has messed up. No one wants anything to do with him. He works with DARPA as a weird stuff expert but he's on leave after his last mission. Suddenly, as he's taking his son on a trip, he's recalled to investigate the tragedy and to find Maeve. Walker is dropped into town just as quarantine is called locking down the town. Walker quickly discovers that he's not the only one looking for Maeve. What follows is a race against time to find Maeve, discover what's wrong with her, and how to stop it.


This is a must-read book in a must-read series for me but like I said above, you don't need to read the other books to enjoy this one. If that summary strikes your fancy, dive in here, you'll be fine. I love the characters in this book, especially Walker, who strikes a great tone of I don't really want to be here but I'm going to make the best of it and be a badass while I'm here. He's wicked smart and funny and you can tell that Golden really knows this character and has fun writing him. I also loved the "small town coming together to overcome the odds" feel that this book has. While the conflict in this book is on the larger scale the setting brings it back down to a personal level and that makes the experience truly special. 


As for why it's not a five star read for me, there is a chunk of the book that I found boring and repetitive and while the rest of the book definitely made up for it, there was a small chunk of the book that I didn't enjoy as much. Small gripes but enough for me to knock off a star. This is absolutely a must-read for any fan of horror thrillers.

Turns out that this is part of a series and I had already read the first volume. Ben Walker is called to the site of a weird incident. A driver ran over a 4th of July parade and the people he touched started dying horribly. Trying to help, an innocent bystander ended up getting infected. Walker must find her and stop this death spree. Usually I enjoy this kind of novels, but I didn’t connect with this one. I didn’t like the characters all that much, and the plot relies heavily on their feelings, thoughts and experiences. I liked Walker, but the rest of the characters didn’t feel organic or relatable. The story is interesting and the deaths gory enough for horror fans. I just didn’t connect with the novel. 
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/ St. Martin's Press!

A lovely little family is enjoying the local Fourth of July Parade when the unthinkable happens. 

A crazed man goes on a murder spree and what's even crazier is that everyone he touches - dies. Like literally drops to the ground and dies. 

Maeve watches her father get run down by the crazed man's car and when he doesn't stop, she takes a metal bat and takes him out. 

Only, in that brief moment he hovered between life and death, she quickly becomes infected with whatever he had. 

The bioweapon known as the "Red Hands" has escaped the laboratory and is currently attached to Maeve.

 At first she's horrified by accidently causing death...but now she craves it. 

This was an interesting take on the "zombie" apocalypse. 

I really enjoyed getting Maeve's perspective for this one. The slow descent, the gentle rationings and the ultimate betrayal made it a compelling read.

I was a bit annoyed that no one seemed to get the importance of basic biosafety protocols but I am a bit biased (I work in a lab...so these things are second nature to me).

The plot itself felt a bit meandering but came together quite well in the end.

Let me set the stage:  small town during their annual Fourth of July parade, a car comes revving into the crowd of people, hitting several spectators.  The driver staggers out of the car, and everyone he touches dies almost instantly.  Sounds creepy, right?  It did start out that way, but then it seems like the vast majority of the book was spent chasing someone who had contracted the contagion through the woods, as they tried to elude various government agencies and contract killers/hunters.  I had really hoped for more of the "creep factor" and less of the action & suspense category but that is just me.  It seems to have glowing reviews, so this is just my personal preference.