Time to Die: The Cost of Mercy
What happens when the people who make you laugh are the same ones breaking your heart?

Glen Hellman's most ambitious thriller yet—where character depth matters more than body counts, and the wisecrack in the face of danger isn't comic relief but the truest thing anyone says.

The Book
Greg Newsome opens the novel screaming at his Google Home about train schedules, hurling the device out a second-floor window where it explodes in the street, nearly braining a neighbor walking her dog. His girlfriend, FBI agent Isabelle "Izzy" Rossi, watches with arms crossed and that patented look—the Danger Boy Squint—that somehow arouses him even when she's clearly not in the mood. They're heading to New York for dinner with Benny "The Knife" Santini, the most powerful mob boss east of the Mississippi, who will order Greg's meal without asking and bear-hug Izzy like she's his favorite daughter.

This is how Glen Hellman writes thrillers: you're laughing at the absurdity of Greg's technology tantrum one moment, and in the next breath you're sitting across from a man who's sent scores of people to early graves yet somehow remains the most loyal friend anyone could want. These aren't contradictions to Hellman—they're how actual humans survive unbearable things.

Time to Die is literary crime fiction disguised as a thriller, or maybe it's the other way around. Either way, it's a novel about people first—complicated, funny, fierce, flawed people who've become family not through blood but through repeated exposure to bullets, kidnappings, and the kind of loyalty that makes you drive two hours to help bury a body, no questions asked.

The found family Hellman has built across seven novels comes into sharp focus here: Greg with his strategic brilliance and reckless courage, constantly earning his "Danger Boy" nickname. Izzy with her lethal competence wrapped in exasperation, trying to keep her man alive despite his best efforts. Benny Santini, the enigmatic crime boss who's both ruthless master of the underworld and surprisingly tender father. Louie the Bat, crude muscle who drops wisdom when you least expect it. Sling, the mercenary with his own moral code. And Maria, Benny's daughter, still carrying the weight of witnessing her family's slaughter.

When Serbian war criminal Dimitri Vukovic—a man whose evil makes other monsters look like amateurs—finally makes his move against this family, the novel examines its deepest themes: mercy and its costs, justice versus revenge, the permanent weight of impossible choices. Not through philosophical debates but through people we've come to know making decisions under fire, living with consequences that don't fade when the chapter ends.

Hellman maintains his signature tonal whiplash throughout. One page has Greg and Louie debating whether fiddles have strings or "strangs" while armed to the teeth. The next delivers emotional gut-punches that leave you staring at the page. The fourth-wall breaks and meta-commentary aren't gimmicks—they're Greg's mind trying to process the unprocessable, humor as defense mechanism against a world that keeps getting darker.

The thriller mechanics are all present: high-stakes gunfights, strategic planning worthy of chess masters, a coordinated strike that lights up Detroit's Greektown, surveillance and countersurveillance, the cat-and-mouse tension of hunted becoming hunters. But these set pieces serve character revelation. The violence has weight because we know these people—their histories, their fears, what they stand to lose.

What makes Time to Die Hellman's most ambitious work is how he examines the impossible questions through lived experience rather than abstraction: When does justice become revenge? What's the true cost of mercy? How do you continue when the people you love are in crosshairs? Can a found family survive unbearable pressure? The characters don't debate these questions—they embody them, make choices that reveal who they really are when everything's on the line.

The novel doesn't offer easy answers or comfortable resolutions. It's honest about grief, about rage, about how some losses change you permanently. But it's also honest about resilience—how humor persists in the darkest moments, how love survives terrible odds, how people find ways to continue when continuation seems impossible. The comedy doesn't undercut the drama; it amplifies it by showing how humans actually cope with the unbearable.

This is Elmore Leonard's dialogue precision meets the Coen Brothers' understanding that tragedy and comedy aren't opposites but companions. It's Dennis Lehane's emotional depth in genre clothing. It's literary fiction that happens to include gunfights, or crime fiction that refuses to sacrifice character for plot mechanics.

Why Read This Book
Because you're tired of thrillers where characters are just chess pieces in elaborate plots. You want people who feel real—who make terrible jokes when they're terrified, who love fiercely and stupidly, who carry grudges and guilt in equal measure.

Because you believe genre fiction can break your heart while making you laugh, sometimes in the same paragraph.

Because you want dialogue that crackles. Relationships that complicate rather than simplify. Found families that feel earned through shared trauma and shared dinners.

Because you're looking for a thriller that trusts you enough to slow down for character moments—the morning coffee ritual, the inside joke that lands differently after loss, the small gestures that reveal everything about who someone really is.

Because you want consequences that stick. Choices that matter. Violence that costs something beyond the immediate body count.

Because you understand that the best crime fiction asks hard moral questions and has the courage not to answer them neatly. That mercy and justice aren't simple opposites, that revenge can feel both righteous and hollow, that the people we love most can also drive us to absolute fury.

Because you've ever been part of a found family—that group of people who aren't blood but who'd show up at 3 AM if you needed them, who know your worst qualities and stick around anyway, who make you laugh when you should be crying.

Because you want prose that cuts. Fourth-wall breaks that feel earned rather than clever. Meta-commentary that serves the emotional truth of the moment rather than showing off.

Because you believe thrillers can be literary without losing their teeth. That action scenes can reveal character. That the wisecrack under pressure isn't deflection—it's the most honest thing anyone can say.

Because you're ready for a book that doesn't play it safe emotionally. That understands survival isn't the same as victory, that winning might cost everything that made the fight worth having.

Because you want to feel something real. To laugh genuinely and hurt genuinely, often in rapid succession. To care about people who aren't perfect but who are trying their best in impossible circumstances.

Because you've been waiting for crime fiction that takes its characters as seriously as its plot. That understands the heist, the gunfight, the clever escape—these are backdrops for the real story, which is always about people trying to hold onto each other when the world keeps trying to tear them apart.

About the Series
Time to Die is the seventh Greg Newsome thriller and represents a tonal and thematic culmination of everything Hellman has built across six previous novels. New readers can absolutely start here—the book provides sufficient context and character introduction—but those who've followed Greg from the beginning will experience the full emotional weight of how far these people have come and what they've survived together.

The series has always been character-first, but this installment takes that commitment to its furthest extreme. The humor is sharper, the emotional stakes impossibly high, the moral questions more complicated. It's Hellman at his most ambitious and uncompromising—a book willing to prioritize what happens inside its characters over the mechanics of what happens to them.

If you're new to the series, this is an excellent entry point to discover whether Hellman's tragicomic voice is for you. If you're already a fan, this is the book you've been waiting for—the one that shows what this found family is truly made of when tested beyond any reasonable limit.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Glen Hellman has written eight Greg Newsome thrillers and one work of non-fiction (Intentional Leadership). A former "Mr. Cranky" tech blogger whose investigative journalism contributed to FBI prosecutions of fraudulent startup CEOs, he's a Distinguished Faculty member at the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering and runs CxO Elevate, providing executive coaching to startup CEOs.

He draws from 40+ years of technology startups, a background as a turnaround CEO with over $350 million in company exits, and was named #1 Angel Investor in America by Tech.co readers in 2012. His stand-up comedy background informs his understanding of timing and how humor functions under pressure. He lives in Oakton, Virginia, with his wife Nancy, who inspired multiple characters across the series and appears as both Nina and Izzy in the novels.