Hellbound by Chester D. Campbell
MWSA Review
Hellbound, is a thrilling and well woven story, intricate in its blending of mafia bad guys and everyday elderly people on a church bus tour.
Vignettes of the lives of individuals on the bus, both known and hidden, are brought to us mixed in with the unknown to the passenger’s drama, played out slowly over the course of the tour. Campbell, keeps us on the edge of our seats as the relentless pursuit by the mafia of the central character Bryce Reynolds (Pat Pagano) reaches a conclusion.
The ending will surprise the reader. A great story, that I can see as a made for TV movie that will hold an audience’s attention..
Reviewed by: jim greenwald (2015)
Author's Synopsis
The story takes place in 1999. When a busload of seniors from a suburban Nashville church head down the Natchez Trace on a carefree journey to The Big Easy, they are unaware that a Mafia hit squad is playing a deadly game of tag with them. All except one passenger. The man they know as Bryce Reynolds is really Pat Pagano, a Medal of Honor winner from World War II and a successful Las Vegas stockbroker who was lured into handling investments for a New York crime family.
After his two grown sons are killed in an attack by a rival gang and his wife succumbs to cancer, Pagano decimates the mob with his testimony in federal court. He disappears, and then resurfaces in Nashville as Reynolds, a retired businessman from Oklahoma. But after years of searching, an old Mafia capo tracks Pagano to the church bus enroute to New Orleans.