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Henchmen Kindle Edition
A chance encounter at a sushi bar has led them to a young woman with a terrifying secret she doesn’t even know she possesses. The Yakuza wants to use her to put pressure on a missing father. No one’s entirely certain exactly what the secret is, but it smells like a weapon and it might be just the sort of thing to help topple a nation.
They’re done pulling small jobs. Now they’re aiming for the top – because why bother robbing jewelry stores when you can topple governments?
Yakuza gang fights.
Incursions into high-security, top-secret government buildings.
Picking fake fights with losers in bars.
A psycho ex-coworker who has some strange friends.
And a well-dressed older gentleman who haunts dreams.
It’s all in a day’s work for Steven…one of the world’s most dedicated and dangerous…
HENCHMEN
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateNovember 15, 2013
- File size669 KB
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About the Author
When he's not writing, he's programming and practicing his Kenpo. He's also an active blogger, waxing philosophical about a range of topics from writing, to martial arts, to politics and religion. Frankly, he fancies himself something of a Renaissance geek about a wide variety of things.
Eric is the author of Henchmen, Arise, and a collection of stories called The Clock Man. He's currently working on his fourth and fifth novels.
Product details
- ASIN : B00GRXB5IK
- Publication date : November 15, 2013
- Language : English
- File size : 669 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 199 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,131,938 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #9,750 in Fantasy Adventure Fiction
- #11,683 in Occult Horror
- #20,857 in Occult Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Eric Lahti grew up looking for UFOs and buried treasure in northwest New Mexico. Unfortunately, he never found either of them. Or maybe he did and he's just not telling. He did find some good stories to tell at parties about lights in the skies and gold in the ground, though. When he's not writing, he's programming and practicing his Kenpo. He's also an active blogger, waxing philosophical about a range of topics from writing, to martial arts, to politics and religion. Frankly, he fancies himself something of a Renaissance geek about a wide variety of things.
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The next chapter is our breather, a chance to catch our breath and settle into some character development. Well, sort of. A third of the way in, our heisters, unwinding after a successful job, find the girl strapped to their table (I’d say, don’t ask, but apparently it’s a way of serving sushi in high end restaurants) is under attack by men who at first say there’s been some kind of mistake and can they switch table-girls. When our heroes say no, that’s when all hell breaks out, and while that last expression might be a cliché, the ensuing action is handled well enough that it certainly is not. Although I did have brief moments of Kill Bill flashing through my mind. The author has this wonderful way of inserting these commentaries in the middle of things, i.e. “Now if this were a movie…” like the voice over narrative voice of the hero in the TV series, Burn Notice. He does it so smoothly you barely notice, and instead of feeling intrusive it just adds to the excitement and humor of the scene and to the author’s command of the material he’s writing about. By the way, there are plenty of consciously cracked jokes in this chapter, unlike the prior hook chapter. Not all of them land, but most of them do and are absolutely hilarious. This is perhaps my favorite kind of novel, one with a hefty dose of tongue and cheek humor to bolster or maybe take the edge off the adrenaline pumping action scenes, kind of like the way they do the Indiana Jones franchise.
By now the reader should realize this book is never going to entirely slip into low gear, but at the same time they should be feeling confident that character development and cheeky humor are not going to get left by the wayside either. Just hearing the author describe how his seven foot Amazon of a woman, one of the heist crew team mates, handles yakuza tough guys is worth the price of admission.
Despite our heroes being, well, more anti-heroes really, they score a lot of points when they rescue the woman in the sushi bar, and beat the hell out of the guy who was hired to beat and rape her. Their determination to protect her from yakuza reprisal, knowing the Japanese gangsters will hound her to the ends of the earth, leads them on another much bigger adventure none of them expected. One that involves the highest levels of government security, and a really nasty breakthrough weapon that scares even the guys who brought us napalm and nuclear weapons. If you were simply screaming with delight as the roller coaster rushed from the crest to the valley below earlier, you’re definitely glad you’re strapped in for this ride now. As they dig further into the case of the girl’s missing father and his ties with the government, they find the weapon he was involved with was called “the destroyer of worlds”. And the last reports of the father were that he was in a catatonic state. Had he been “taken care of” by the government for getting a little too close to the truth? Or had getting too close to the truth fried his mind? There’s already plenty of story here, but our team of misfits as it turns out has an agenda beyond helping the girl they rescued solve the mystery of her life—however world impacting it may be. Turns out they have some world impacting intentions themselves—like destroying congress as their small way of reining in corruption in the U.S. They are short on details in the first half of the book, but long on purpose. And who doesn’t want to follow along with a gang of super-sleuths that have proven their expertise in handling most any over-the-top situation multiple times over in the story now (I barely listed a small number of the actual examples), with such a noble goal as that? Yes there is a certain amount of crazy in this book. But it’s fun crazy, and it’s no more surreal than anything that Elmore Leonard penned.
Somewhere in the middle of that page I started hearing the late Lou Reed singing "Walk on the Wild Side" in the back of my mind.
I couldn't get it out of my head and the more I read, the more persistent it became until, by the end of this excellent novel, I was actually humming it.
There's a reason for that.
Eric Lahti's "Henchmen" takes its readers for a sometimes funny, sometimes dead serious walk on the wild side of storytelling by combining urban fantasy (well, among the characters there is a 7-foot-tall blonde woman who is bulletproof) and science fiction (there is at least one alien) with polemic, satire, and dark humor. Anything and everything is fair game for Lahti; from average men and women who have long since stopped caring enough about their government to bother understanding it, to government workers who never question what they are told to do, to power-hungry politicians, to those uber-greedy 1-Percenters that have been looting and pillaging the American economy for more than 50 years.
At one point, for example, Lahti writes: "The U.S. government was supposed to be of the people, for the people, and by the people, but it’s wound up being of the people, for the rich and by the corporations. They don’t care about the people anymore, unless the people have enough money or power to be interesting. They keep us sated with bad TV and religion, but it’s all smokescreens and mirrors. They’re not interested in anything but more power. Not all despots take over with military might; the best ones give you an imaginary enemy, and then distract you with emotional issues."
That's powerful stuff, words you might suspect would be included in a left-wing pamphlet but not in a novel about criminals who routinely break into buildings and steal whatever they can lay their hands on.
At another point he writes: “Congress is a symptom of the disease, but it’s not the disease itself. Remember, Congress makes the laws of this country, and all laws are designed to tell you what you cannot do. The one primary thing they don’t want you to do is think for yourself, and they’ve become experts at preventing you from looking up and realizing you’re slowly being squeezed to death. Any time there’s even a hint of an uprising, they find things to make you afraid of. Terrorism, gay marriage, abortion, taxes."
Just listen to the political debates going on in this election year if you don't believe that's true. The statements made by men and women seeking elected office are, with rare exception, not about solutions but about raising the fear level of average Americans.
Wild stuff, indeed.
The narrative revolves around a small band of outlaws whose primary goal is to reduce the United States to ruins so that it can rebuild itself as a more equitable society. Each of these outlaws has his or her own reason for wanting this to happen. Along the way, after dealing with Japanese gangsters in Las Vegas, they add another member to the group: A young woman searching for her long-lost father. It's a somewhat complicated narrative but despite its various threads it's easy enough to follow. Lahti has included some knife-edged observations about society as a whole interspersed with some spectacular fight scenes to give his story some spice.
His characters are interesting, ranging from the 7-foot-tall woman who is the leader of the outlaw band to Steven, a former government employee who is now a member of her gang.
Do they succeed in tearing down the government?
Or do federal agents who are pursuing the gang manage to foil its plans?
Sorry, you're going to have to read this very fine novel to find out.
It comes down to this: "Henchmen" is, to my way of thinking, Indie storytelling at its best and brightest. It goes places most formulaic mainstream books don't - or won't - take their readers and it does so in an unflinching, but very enjoyable, way.
Ready to take a walk on the wild side?
If the answer is "Yes" then I'd say you won't find a better place to start than with "Henchmen."
Top reviews from other countries


At first glance I thought it would be more of a man's book - henchmen, villains, bikes and guns - but I'm pleased to say I was wrong. Despite being written from the point of view of henchman Steven, it is just as appealing to a female audience. The little asides about men's fascination with weapons and big power tools were hilarious. And it has some pretty hot female characters too, both very believable and enviable.
How can you categorise a book like this? Action, thriller, supernatural, humorous? It needs its own unique category creating to do it justice. I guess you'll just have to read it and decide for yourself. One thing's for certain, it fits perfectly into the category of thoroughly entertaining reading.

In the opening chapters, I felt that that the author was trying to tell me more about the assorted members of this team than the main character and protagonist. Then i realised that he wasn't really the main protagonist. That accolade probably belonged to the boss Eve or at least to the team as a whole. To understand the main character, you have to understand how he fits in to this motley crew.
Again the first person perspective allows a good dose of sarcasm to be delivered in the mindset of the narrator as well as in the dialogue. The humour works well and gives the storyline a tongue in cheek aspect that makes you not think too hard about the plot. The plot is fast paced though and unfolds with a lot of action, and the dialogue builds up the characterization.
Are the henchmen a bunch of villains as they portray themselves? Maybe in the same guise as Breaking Bad antiheroes. They are just a cool bunch of renegades with big plans.

The title of my review is actually a disservice to the author, but it was the closest I could get to two recognisable entities which have in the past, provided entertainment of a certain kind. Throughout this tale I enjoyed the sometimes laconic, but always insightful observations of the narrator. I liked him so much that I was hoping that if he did get hurt, he wouldn't die; even at the end.
I also enjoyed the imagery and the incredible situations in which the team found themselves. I was able to clearly visualise the characters. How do you make a larger than life character seem more believable? If you write like this author, you give them strengths and weaknesses, plus you choreograph the action scenes to create more than a hint of realism.
There are a few scenes in the plot which border on sci-fi/fantasy, but because of the plot, for this story they work. In my view it's hard to write a page-turning action tale, and include just sufficient detail to create the believability factor. Here, we have weaponry details and occasionally computer details that lift the action from the page. It's equally hard to write humour. To combine those aspects takes a particular skill; which is where Eric Lahti impressed me most. Here you will find a blend of excitement, action, comradeship, fantasy and humour. I enjoyed this story from start to finish and I'm pleased to know that the sequel is already out there ... waiting for me.

Jess is the live wire I kinda hoped would break the unwritten electricity buffer that pulses between herself and Steven - I still have hope in the sequel that those two will get it on, they would be well suited. I digress. The story begins with action, it continues with action and it comes to a frankly gripping end with yes, you guessed it - action. I was glued to the tale of this motley, often rough around the edges assembly of miscreants, crooks and hackers who appear to have been moulded into what they are now by their own loyalty to a country, not a government, that they are patriots of. The exception being the really mystifying Eve, who, aside from conjuring up some fantastic mental images upon occasion, seems to be not of this world (in the sense of the world in the story) and continues to the last to be somewhat of an enigmatic mystery.
The characters become more and more likeable, in their own inimitable ways, as the story progresses and I found myself willing the writing to keep appearing as I swished away the imaginary pages of the kindle. When it finally ended, the last few pages of the book were none the less fantastic than the first few and the only saving grace of my trauma of reaching the end was that Eric actually had the good grace to give me a snippet of the sequel... I bought the sequel there and then.
In closing, if you're a fan of the slightly off left of centre, imaginative and extremely creative thriller/adventure as I am, you'll be hooked by page three to this twisting maelstrom of colourful characters plots and sub-plots. While the lead 'team' are technically the bad guys breaking the law, the underlying story is one to which we can all relate... are those in power REALLY doing the right thing and more to the point, what if? Eric earned himself another devoted fan of his work today. Arise is some way down my list of books to get to, only because I like to give every author a fighting chance and review in turn. Personally, I can't wait to get to it.