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22 October 2011

Review: IN DESPERATION, Rick Mofina

Publisher's blurb

A single mother answers a knock at her door and enters a nightmare…
Eleven-year-old Tilly Martin is dragged from her suburban bedroom. Her mother, Cora, pleads for mercy but the kidnappers are clear: if they don’t get their $5 million back in five days, Tilly dies. If anyone contacts police, Tilly dies.

 A reporter receives a heart-stopping email that rips open the past…
Journalist Jack Gannon’s estranged sister, Cora, disappeared without a trace decades ago. Now she is frantically reaching out to him for help. Cora tells him about the shameful mistakes she’s made—but she guards the one secret that may be keeping her daughter alive.

A Mexican priest hears a chilling confession…
A twenty-year-old assassin, haunted by the faces of the people he’s executed, seeks absolution as he sets out to commit his last murders as a hired killer.

Time is running out…
In the U.S. and Mexico, police and the press go flat out on Tilly’s case. But as Gannon digs deeper into his anguished sister’s past, the hours tick down on his niece’s life and he faces losing a fragment of his rediscovered family forever.

My take

IN DESPERATION is #3 in Mofina's Jack Gannon series. I have reviewed the earlier ones ( VENGEANCE ROAD and THE PANIC ZONE ) but IN DESPERATION didn't grab me right at the start in quite the same way, although the snatching of Tilly is a horrifying opening hook.

The novel builds pace by adding plot element after element. Tilly's mother Cora "in desperation" contacts her long-lost brother journalist Jack Gannon who happens to be in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, working on a story about drug cartels. As it turns out, the contacts that Jack has made for this story are of great advantage in tracking down those responsible for Tilly's abduction. The story moves several times between Juarez and Phoenix Arizona where Cora and Tilly live.

As the story builds so does the tension, mainly around whether the police will find Tilly in time.

It is a novel that relies on coincidences but it is not on its own in that.

My rating: 4.2
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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous22 October 2011 at 22:36

    Kerrie - This definitely sounds like an interesting premise for a story, and quite a hook indeed. Even if it didn't pull you in quite like Mofina's others, it sounds suspenseful. I'm not one for too many coincidences, though, I must say...

    ReplyDelete

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