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ONE FALSE MOVE
by Alex Kava
MIRA Books, August 2004
320 pages
$19.95
ISBN: 0778320715


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Melanie Starks has been living on the con with her 17-year-old son for most of his life. Now her brother Jared is out of prison on a legal technicality, and she quickly finds herself in serious trouble. Never having used a gun before, she now finds herself running from several law enforcement agencies after an apparently botched bank robbery in a small town in Nebraska.

The rest of the book spends a good deal of time and energy with long explanations of Melanie's philosophy, her self-justification for the life of crime she is living, and her unwillingness to see that she is in large part responsible for the situation with which she now must deal. Like any mother she worries about her son. Now she's beginning to feel her son Charlie is enjoying his life of minor crimes entirely too much.

Once the bank robbery goes bad, Melanie decides she wants to get out of the game altogether. Unfortunately it's now too late. She and Charlie are on the run from the cops and Federal authorities for multiple murders and attempted bank robbery. Although up to now she's been portrayed as a strong and even admirable -- if bent -- mother figure, now that brother Jared is back in her life, he becomes the controlling figure with little resistance from Melanie. And always in the background is the shadowy figure of Max Kramer, Jared's criminal defense attorney.

One is disposed to feel some sympathy for single-mom Melanie and her son, Charlie, but her constant whining over Jared's reliance on the use of guns, and the way she's abused by Jared becomes tedious at times. There are a few lapses in logic in this thriller and the chase itself seems to go on over-long.

My major difficulty with ONE FALSE MOVE, is that the convoluted plot spun out to the reader in bits and pieces, is in the end, not adequately illuminated. It almost requires the reader to take notes and review them toward the end of the book. However, setting aside these difficulties, Alex Kava has written an intense, fast moving and intricate story, filled with unusual characters and several plot twists.

Reviewed by Carl Brookins, September 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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