|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
Matt Stromsoe and Mike Tavarez were best friends in high school spending time at each other's home and helping each other out in school. Mike beat all odds and went to Harvard University where he earned top honors. The newspapers wrote articles about the Mexican who was able to get out of his dangerous area and make good of himself. But after college Mike went back to his old neighborhood and soon joined and became the leader of La Eme, the most powerful Mexican gang in California. His best friend from boyhood, Matt, became a police detective whose job it was to find Mike and send him to jail for the crimes he committed. When the police killed Mike's girlfriend by accident, Mike was out for revenge. He set a bomb in Matt's car, but instead of killing his old friend the bomb killed Matt's son and wife. Matt was left severely injured with the loss of one eye, a finger, and numerous pins in his legs. He left California for Florida where he fell into the bottle for two years. A former colleague found Matt and offered him a job at his private security firm back in California. Matt's first job is to protect Frankie Leigh, a popular TV weather reporter in San Diego. Frankie is also researching a formula for rainmaking, something that her great grandfather also did. For some reason she is being stalked by a man and has pictures to identify him. It turns out that the stalker works for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The DWP want Frankie to stop her rainmaking research. They offer her a lot of money to work for them so that they would own her formula but she refuses and now they want Frankie out of the picture. Through a complicated plot line, Mike Tavarez is brought into the situation even though he is in jail for killing Matt's family. As Matt and Frankie fall in love they do whatever they can so Frankie can to continue forecasting the weather and experimenting with her formula for rainmaking. STORM RUNNERS is T Jefferson Parker's 14th novel. I found it an interesting book that was fast-paced and filled with sympathetic characters, even the evil Mike Tavarez. I had some problems with the love story between Matt and Frankie. It would have been better if the couple were just friends instead of lovers. This was the same problem I had with Parker's last book. He seems to not be comfortable writing romances, and that part of the story stood out like a sore thumb. The theory is that adding romance to an action book is just a way to get women to read it. But Parker is such a good writer his books would attract female readers without a romance story included. Otherwise I liked STORM RUNNERS a lot. There was quite a bit about weather forecasting that was interesting and I especially liked the complex and intriguing story line of Mike and Matt, two good friends who became enemies. Make sure you pick up a copy of this book.
Reviewed by Sharon Katz, February 2007
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
