At All Costs

Rating:
Summary: A Race of the Mind and Heart, A Top Class Thriller
Review: John Gilstrap brings his characters to life with this novel. Although the storyline is a bit hard to believe, it is, no dought, clever and original. A married couple, living undercover, with fake names, and secret identities are uncovered through a twist of fate that no-one could predict. This is the tale of thier journey to prove thier inocence from a crime committed years prior to the time of the story. In a brilliant attempt, by Gilstrap, to create another dilema for the young couple, he throughs thier thirteen year old son into the mix, young Travis has no idea that his parents are fugitives, and when he finds out he becomes a key factor in the plan to protect thier family. This beautifully composed page turner, by a somewhat new author is sure to keep all its readers on the edge of thier seats, and wanting to reach the end "at all costs."

Rating:
Summary: A Race of the Mind and Heart, A Top Class Thriller
Review: John Gilstrap brings his characters to life with this novel. Although the storyline is a bit hard to believe, it is, no dought, clever and original. A married couple, living undercover, with fake names, and secret identities are uncovered through a twist of fate that no-one could predict. This is the tale of thier journey to prove thier inocence from a crime committed years prior to the time of the story. In a brilliant attempt, by Gilstrap, to create another dilema for the young couple, he throughs thier thirteen year old son into the mix, young Travis has no idea that his parents are fugitives, and when he finds out he becomes a key factor in the plan to protect thier family. This beautifully composed page turner, by a somewhat new author is sure to keep all its readers on the edge of thier seats, and wanting to reach the end "at all costs."

Rating:
Summary: Very dissapointing compared with his first book.
Review: John Gilstrap's first effort, "Nathan's Run" was a great read. Here, the author just makes the plot bigger and more wordy, and ultimatly quite boring.

Rating:
Summary: If you're wary of FBI, you'll love this one
Review: Leave your logic at the door, come in, and read a great page turner. Two innocent people on run for the rest of their lives, suddenly decide to prove their case in the interest of letting their child know the truth. This is not the typical "good guys in white hats, bad guys in black" and that makes this a grabber. Couldn't put it down last night and will pay the price today. But the good guys won, so I'll be a happy napper!

Rating:
Summary: A real page turner
Review: Looking forward to the next one. BD

Rating:
Summary: A Get Up and Go Kind of Book
Review: Overall this is just a fun book, it moves fast and is easy to read. The characters are Mr. and Mrs. everybody thus you identify with them easily. The story is fun if not a little on the "yea right" side of the bench. Ok so some of the actions the lead characters pull off are really not in keeping with a clean cut pair of middle Americans, but hey it's a fiction book. The plot is a little light, there really is not much going on except the main story line and the writing could give us more depth and details, bur becuase it was exciting I let it pass. It reminds me of the movie "Airplane", everyone enjoys watching it but it is not going to be on the AFI top 100 movies list anytime soon. Go into this book not expecting a lot and you will enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: A Get Up and Go Kind of Book
Review: Overall this is just a fun book, it moves fast and is easy to read. The characters are Mr. and Mrs. everybody thus you identify with them easily. The story is fun if not a little on the "yea right" side of the bench. Ok so some of the actions the lead characters pull off are really not in keeping with a clean cut pair of middle Americans, but hey it's a fiction book. The plot is a little light, there really is not much going on except the main story line and the writing could give us more depth and details, bur becuase it was exciting I let it pass. It reminds me of the movie "Airplane", everyone enjoys watching it but it is not going to be on the AFI top 100 movies list anytime soon. Go into this book not expecting a lot and you will enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: Superbly believable. Has it all.
Review: Rarely do I come across a book that has it all: a believable plot, fast-paced action, well-written, deals with the human emotions as well as the action itself. This has got to be one of them. Very smooth reading. Very fair ending that leaves nothing to the imagination. A MUST read!

Rating:
Summary: Read this book!
Review: The Brightons are your typical American family with one major, glaring exception, they're not the Brightons. They're fugitives on the lam from the law. Why? They were framed by a corrupt FBI agent for murders they didn't commit. They were part of an envrionmental cleanup team at a Super Fund site in Arkansas. the Ulysses S. Grant Ammunition Plant, which had been closed down in 1965 by President Johnson. Jake and Carolyn were involved in the clean up of the site when a bomb went off killing their companions. When they escaped, they were shot at by a sniper. The corrupt FBI agent, a man named Peter Frankel, is now the Assistant Director of the FBI, and he has a vested interest in arresting the Brightons for the crime that he and his henchman had committed. Carolyn's uncle, who'd practically raised her from when she was a little girl, had one of his employees, a man named Thorne, supply them with everything they needed for a life in hiding. He even told them not to have a kid because of the complications it would cause. The book starts off slowly and then picks up. Jake Brighton's the manager of the service department of a Good Ole Boy's Ford dealership in South Carolina. That's when their perfect life falls apart. The FBI raids the dealership looking for drugs. He's arrested in the raid and taken to jail. His lawyer comes to believe he's innocent, and slowly, gradually, so does the FBI agent who arrested him. The climax is a gunfight and a posh private club in Washington, DC.

Rating:
Summary: a surprising end
Review: The novel At All Costs by J. Gilstrap deals with the pretty topical subjects of international warfare/ arms trafficking and the corruption of FBI. Gilstrap combines those subjects in a very interesting way. The novel is a thrilling page-turner with growing suspense and a real surprising end.
The way the characters are presented is logical, detailed and very realistic, thus makes them rather interesting and gives the reader the possibility to identify with the main characters.
In our opinion the beginning is a little long - winding, but it turns out to be a stylistic device aimed at building up suspense. This "normal life" beginning makes it unputdownable.
Unfortunately the novel gets very violent and even a little artificial in the end, so Gilstrap is kind of breaking the mood.
But all in all we would say that At All Costs is a book worth reading especially because of the surprise of finding out who the guy is who pulls the strings in the background and why.