Samuel Hawley Battles the Past – and the Present

A hardened career criminal and seasoned murderer is not a guy I can admire. So why did I identify so closely with him? “The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley,” a new novel by Hannah Tinti, tells the story of a modern-day criminal on a terrifying mission to clean up everything from his past. A TIME review described it as, “Hercules wields a shotgun.” Intrigued, I downloaded it within days of its March release, unsure if I was plunging into a family drama, science fiction, mythology or a crime thriller. I found a little of each in Tinti’s pages. Her prowess at p