By: Deborah J. Summers
The day begins like any other in a quiet Oregon college town, two mugs warming the hands of Michael and Ann, a to-do list that looks comfortingly ordinary, until their home explodes and the past kicks down the door. In a single shockwave, a marriage that once ran on routine pivots to survival. Out of smoke and shrapnel emerges the pulse of Larry Patzer’s thriller, The Past Always Comes Back: when the life you built is targeted, do you run, do you hide, or do you fight?
Patzer wastes no time. The blast is not a random act; it’s the opening gambit in a hunt that will chase Michael and Ann across borders and into moral gray zones. What follows is a transcontinental cat-and-mouse chase from the backroads of the Pacific Northwest through Canada and on toward the cathedrals and cobblestones of Austria, where every mile forces a choice, and every choice carries a cost. Fans who gravitate to the propulsive pace, layered intelligence, and the tactical grit will feel right at home, yet this story beats with its own distinct heart: a marriage at the center of the storm.
The premise is elegantly simple and ruthlessly effective. Michael has a history—professional, secret, and long put away—that explains both his instincts and the danger they’re in. He never expected to open that vault again, least of all in front of his wife.
Ann, a mild-mannered, spiritually grounded woman whose life’s work orients around care and conscience, is suddenly asked to step into a world she never imagined: quick decisions, clean lines, steady hands. She’s not a prop. She’s a partner. And because the threat is relentless, she must learn quickly.
One of the book’s great strengths is the credibility of that transformation. Patzer doesn’t wave a wand and turn Ann into a superhero. He lets you feel what change costs. There’s the physicality—recoil, breath, the weight of unfamiliar tools. There’s the interior battle—fear, anger, resolve, the question of who you are when the unthinkable becomes necessary. The couple’s private language of marriage, such as trust, frustration, and forgiveness, gets rewritten on the fly under extreme pressure. You can almost hear the unspoken vows being amended: for better or worse, for run, hide, and fight.
The story’s architecture is both tight and cinematic, yet thoughtful. The title—The Past Always Comes Back—isn’t just a threat; it’s a theme. Sometimes the past returns to collect, sometimes to protect, and most often to complicate. That’s the tension thrumming under every turn: you can’t outrun your history, but you can decide what it makes of you now. Patzer leans into that idea without slowing the pace. Tactical choices like where to hole up, when to move, how to read a room, share space with ethical ones, and what lines you cross to safeguard a life, and how you live with those lines afterward.
As the chase widens, the hunter-hunted dynamic keeps flipping. It’s never as simple as “they’re after us.” Michael and Ann learn, adapt, and force their pursuers to react. That back-and-forth is where the novel’s suspense lives: roadside encounters that go sideways, hotel hallways that feel too long, a face glimpsed a beat too late, a phone that rings when it shouldn’t. The couple’s advantage isn’t brute force; it’s commitment, clarity, and the kind of teamwork born of years spent knowing each other’s tells.
Patzer’s background lends texture to the pages. The technical details land with a confident snap, yet the book never bogs down in jargon. You get enough tradecraft to trust the moves, then the author gets out of the way so you can feel the stakes. And the stakes are never abstract. They are marital and moral: preserving a life together without losing themselves in the process.
Another welcome surprise is how the novel treats conscience. This isn’t carnage-as-spectacle. It’s a consequence. Ann, primarily, serves as the story’s moral accelerant. She is the one most changed by what the moment requires, and her questions about violence, about purpose, about who she’ll be on the other side haunt the margins in the best way. Readers who want their thrillers to reckon with right and wrong will appreciate how often the book allows a heartbeat of reflection between bursts of action.
And the settings! Place matters here. From the damp chill of Pacific Northwest mornings to the crisp, old-world air of Austria, each location sharpens the mood and the choices available. Backroads invite evasion; border crossings demand nerve; foreign streets offer cover and risk in equal measure. You feel the geography under the story’s feet, and you understand how terrain can be both enemy and ally.
Crucially, this article won’t spoil the ending. No reveals, no late-stage twists exposed. What you need to know is this: The Past Always Comes Back will deliver. It moves, it hits, and it thinks. It places a believable husband and wife in impossible circumstances and asks what love looks like when running, hiding, and fighting are the only verbs left. Thriller readers over 35 who want both adrenaline and a moral compass will find themselves muttering “just one more chapter” until the room goes quiet and the sun is threatening the blinds.
If you’re ready for a pace that never lets up, a partnership you’ll root for, and a chase that crosses continents and moral fault lines, then lace up.
Run with them. Hide with them. Fight with them. The Past Always Comes Back — coming soon wherever books are sold.
