Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Silver Falls Library | FIC GILSTRAP | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Lyons Public Library | M GILSTRAP | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Salem Main Library | MYSTERY Gilstrap, J. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
A couple that longs for a child of their own stumbles into an apparent kidnapping attempt while camping and suddenly finds themselves in custody of a boy.
Author Notes
John Gilstrap is the acclaimed author of Nathan's Run and AT All Costs, both of which were selections of the Literary Guild. A former firefighter and EMT, he is an explosives-safety expert and an environmental engineer. He lives with his wife and son in Virginia.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Corny internal monologues drag down this action-packed third novel by Gilstrap (Nathan's Run; At All Costs), featuring an ill-starred childless couple and a hapless young mom caught between the cops and the bad guys. Still grieving over the recent stillbirth of their first child, a son they named Steven, Susan and Bobby Martin are on a camping trip in the mountains of West Virginia to mark their fifth wedding anniversary when they encounter a frightened little boy and a suspicious man claiming to be his father. After the stranger pulls a gun, Bobby kills him in the ensuing struggle. Finding police ID on the corpse and fearing the consequences of having killed a cop, the Martins take the boy and flee. Having suffered several miscarriages before the stillbirth, Susan believes that God intends the boy to replace Steven. Meanwhile, in nearby Pittsburgh, down-on-her-luck April Simpson discovers that a local drug dealer has kidnapped her two-year-old son, Justin, to hold as a hostage until he can collect a debt from her ne'er-do-well husband. Desperate for her child's safety, April threatens a mob boss with blackmail and is arrested while attempting armed robbery of a department store. Elsewhere, on a rundown farm, the brother of the man Bobby killed is anguishing over not having come to his sibling's rescue. The hero-protagonist (of sorts) who connects all three stories is aging FBI agent Russell Coates, himself embroiled in an old bull/young bull struggle for king of the hill. Although underdeveloped characters, hokey escapes and rescues replete with pulp romance epiphanies give the thriller a comic opera ring, its swift forward motion will speed readers past its flaws. Agent, Molly Friedrich. 7-city author tour. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Another of Gilstraps innocent families duels with police, the FBI, and serious druglords over the child theyve reluctantly kidnapped. It happens like this. Because William Simpson cant pay back the thousand-plus dollars of scary Patrick Logans drug money hes lifted, Logan very sensibly hires Jacob and Samuel Stanns, a pair of dumb-and-dumber thugs, to kidnap Simpsons stepson Justin, hold him for a week while Simpson comes up with the scratch, and then kill him if he hasnt. But while the thugs are minding their own business burying the kid alive in West Virginias Catoctin National Forest, he incontinently runs off and into the arms of Bobby and Susan Martin, weekend campers trying to rekindle their marital romance after their fourth miscarriage. Bobby miraculously kills Jacob, then, unwilling to tell his unlikely story to the cops, takes off with Susan and Justin in towonly to find to his horror that his numbly bereaved wife believes that this child is hers. Meantime, Justins real mother, April Simpson, realizing that her shiftless husband has put her beloved son in danger, frantically calls on both Logan and his even scarier overlord Carlos Ortega, the old school chum she hasnt seen since he tried to rape herlittle knowing her pleas to them both will set in motion a disastrous new chain of events. Back in Catoctin, the FBI is analyzing the trace evidence that will bring them to the Martins doorstep, not knowing that their job would be a lot easier if only theyd found the one piece of paper tucked into Samuel Stannss pocket. Reading Gilstraps third and most accomplished suspenser (At All Costs, 1998, etc.) is like listening to an all-menace radio station in which everyone everywhere is in maximum danger during every minute of the incredibly compressed 24 hours of the story. Think Mary Higgins Clark with teeth. Author tour
Booklist Review
The author of Nathan's Run (1996) and At All Costs (1998) just keeps getting better and better. Gilstrap likes to take ordinary people and put them in extraordinary situations. Here, for example, a married couple, camping in the West Virginia mountains, stumbles into the middle of a kidnapping. The husband kills one of the kidnappers and rescues the hostage, a little boy. His wife, depressed because they have been unable to have children of their own, decides she wants to keep this one, leaving the husband with a terrible choice: turn himself in and lose the boy, or say nothing and try to live with the knowledge that he killed a man and kidnapped a child. Throw in a few plot twists (the dead kidnapper may or may not be a police officer) and a particularly cunning villain, and you have a fresh, unpredictable thriller that will appeal not only to Gilstrap's fans but also to anyone looking for something different from the usual collection of chase scenes and shoot-'em-ups. --David Pitt