Strong characters compel thrills in ‘Tear It Down’

Throughout Nick Petrie’s action-packed series about former Marine Peter Ash is a perceptive look at a man dealing with the aftermath of his time in Iraq and Afghanistan. Complicated and compassionate, Peter lives daily with what he calls “white static,” post-traumatic claustrophobia that compels him to sleep outside and be on the move; it also gives him a “blast of adrenaline, the hyper-awareness.”

Peter makes that stress work for him. He can’t sleep inside but is great at repairing buildings and roofs; his desire “to be useful” has him helping others, even if it means putting himself in danger.

“Tear It Down,” Petrie’s fourth novel, has Peter’s journalist girlfriend, June Cassidy, urging him to leave their eastern Washington State home for Memphis. June is concerned about threats received by her friend Wanda Wyatt, a war photographer. Peter finds Wanda in extreme danger, the target of unknown assailants who have driven a garbage truck and launched an evening machine gun assault on the small house she recently bought in foreclosure. Wanda also is emotionally fragile from the situations she witnessed and photographed in war.

As Peter begins his repairs, he is car-jacked by 15-year-old homeless blues guitarist Eli Bell, who steals his beloved 1968 truck.

Petrie seamlessly weaves the story threads together into a cohesive plot that explores a neighborhood under siege. Peter and Wanda have seen the worst of battlefields, and both see parallels to this area of Memphis with its “random violence” and drug dealers likened to warlords. “A different kind of war zone, but the job is the same. Document the waste and dignify the dead,” says Wanda, who is photographing the neighborhoods.

“Tear It Down” spins on non-stop action but the in-depth character studies are the heart of the novel. Peter could easily be a close cousin of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher or those two drifters from the old TV series “Route 66.”

But Petrie’s affinity for showing Peter’s layers make this character a distinct action hero.

TROYE FOX Nick Petrie, whose new novel “Tear It Down” is the fourth in his Peter Ash series, will discuss his work Jan. 20 at Murder on the Beach in Delray Beach.

By Nick Petrie. Putnam, 384 pages, $26 ‘Tear It Down’