Vengeance Follows

“Mesmerizing and masterful . . . Aching suspense . . . Gets inside the head of a lethal sociopath while maintaining a loving evocation of a quiet Ohio town with a Richard-Russo-like respect for the human soul.”

—Ron Powers, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and New York Times #1 bestselling coauthor of Flags of Our Fathers


A young man loses the true love of his life and seeks vengeance from the man he holds responsible for his wife’s death. Told with elegant simplicity, this novel of literary suspense is a tragic story of love and loss that ultimately reveals the cruelty of human nature and the healing power of forgiveness.


Sam and Sophie’s idyllic life of Parisian cafés, fine wine, and romantic passion is torn apart when Sophie is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. Then Sophie reveals something that happened years before they met—a horrific event that changed her life and left her wounded in ways no one knew. She’s found peace in the years since, she swears to Sam. But then she’s gone, and Sam finds only pain.


Bereft and alone, he leaves the City of Light and seeks solace in a small French village where no one knows him or his past. Troubled in heart and mind, he knows one man is responsible for Sophie’s death. Sam cannot live without confronting him and holding him accountable for his past crimes.  


And so Sam travels to America, to a charming little Ohio town where lights twinkle on the snow in winter and fairs shimmer in the summer heat. Here, Sam will seek his revenge—and find retribution for his lost love in a way he could never imagine . . .


More praise for "Vengeance Follows":


“Lyrical and stark by turns, Vengeance Follows is as spare as a Hemingway story and as creepy as one by Poe.”

—Mary Doria Russell, 2005 Pulitzer Prize nominee and 

author of The Sparrow


“Lean, compelling, and impossible to put down. I plowed through Scott Lax’s Vengeance Follows and enjoyed every minute of a book written by an author at the top of his game.”

—Josh Karp, author of A Futile and Stupid Gesture and 

Straight Down the Middle


“Beautifully written and memorable . . . A  story of poignant love, brutal loss, and triumph renewal, a testament to the human spirit against all odds.” 

—Phillip Gardner, author of Someone To Crawl Back To


“A spare and elegant tale about wayward grief on a collision course with what Hannah Arendt termed ‘the banality of evil.’ Set in a small town in Ohio, the story hurtles toward a fierce inevitability, and you will find yourself wondering whether mere human goodness is enough to alter its course. In Scott Lax’s hands, how this question gets worked out through closely drawn characters, and through crimes old and new, achieves a level of real artistry.” 

—Shelley Costa, author of You Cannoli Die Once