Even Steven

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: I really like Nathan's Run, but couldn't get into At All Costs. I'm glad Even Steven came along. Very fast paced and a convoluted, but very followable , plot. Enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: Hold On For A Wild Ride
Review: Thoroughly enjoyed Gilstrap's two previous books, Nathan's Run and At All Costs, and expected to be pleased with Even Steven. But when I caught my breath after the crazy 24-hour ride that is this book - WOW, I realized this is his best yet- and a wild ride it is. The action is real, so when it gets to the big screen, there won't be much work to do on the screenplay! The characters really ring true, and I wanted to stay with them. The author is truly a master of character and suspense, and so very good at describing the range of emotion that comes with having children in our lives. Bravo Mr. Gilstrap!

Rating:
Summary: A plot to be plowed through, not savored.
Review: To judge from the blurb on the book's dust jacket, it appears to the reader as if Gilstrap has written yet another imperiled child/family-on-the-run novel for which he's rapidly becoming known. But Pocket Books, John Gilstrap's new publisher, is deliberately misleading the reader into making such an assumption. The central protagonists, Bobby and Susan Martin, spend most of the book either at their house or the mall. The only time they are on the run is when they're escaping the murder scene at the national park and are racing back home. Other than that, it's notable that Mr. Gilstrap was trying to stretch his wings a bit here and leaving mainly his devotion to the family unit as the only common denominator shared by NATHAN'S RUN, still his high water mark, and AT ALL COSTS. Pocket Books, however, would have you believe otherwise. Shame on them.

That said, EVEN STEVEN starts out promisingly. As always, Gilstrap sets up conflicts and situations that actually ENGAGE the reader. You FEEL Bobby and Susan Martin's desperate bid for parenthood, you HURT with April Simpson in her hopeless situation. These are real-life problems that plague so many of us, yet Gilstrap is able to give them even more dramatic impact in his fiction.

But then something very strange happens- the character delineation stops and, while the book takes place over a 24 hour period and doesn't leave much room for character development (OTOH, Susan dramatically swings back and forth from a normal state to a completely delusional state back to a normal state in those 24 hours), the reader is denied the chance for more backstory in these characters' pasts and they become mere automatons for a resolution that is telegraphed all the way from the middle of the book.

The action is thrilling, many people get killed or seriously injured but the loose threads hanging at the end of the book are simply unforgivable. What happens to Samuel? What exactly happens to Ricky Timmons at the national park? What was the result of the test at the end of the book, something that seems to have been cribbed from the finale of Tom Clancy's PATRIOT GAMES?

How did Jacob Stanns get ahold of a police ID and how did he and Patrick Logan even meet since the former lived in WV and the latter in Pittsburgh? Aren't there enough thugs in Pittsburgh so the crime bosses don't have to import muscle from the sticks? And how does a supposedly canny crime boss suddenly get stupid enough to go back to a federal crime scene to meet with the accomplice of a kidnapper he'd hired (with kid in tow)?

And what DA in his or her right mind would simply throw out an ironclad case in which a person attempts to rob a mall, resists arrest and fires a gun at a crowd? And, in the Martins's case, the legal resolution wasn't even addressed- Their problems just seem to have vanished as if the reader can take it on Gilstrap's blind faith that federal prosecutors are soft-hearted public servants who are willing to look the other way at manslaughter and possible kidnapping charges.

With the conflict still far from being resolved, the reader looks at the page number, then at the last page and realizes that only about 80 or so pages remain for Gilstrap to resolve all these myriad details. When one sees that he doesn't (he wastes his dwindling space and time dawdling in Samuel's mind about how his father was killed), one has to wonder if his editor at Pocket Books gave him enough time to finish the final draft. The denouement is one of the most telescoped I've ever seen and the ending, while mildly thrilling, left me feeling cheated and unsatisfied.

The reason why I'm giving EVEN STEVEN three stars is because Gilstrap's writing seems to improved over the indulgences that occasionally mar NATHAN'S RUN and AT ALL COSTS. Once again, Gilstrap is pragmatic, world-weary, and amusingly cynical. He shifts POV and narrator voice expertly (Samuel's simple-minded narrator, in a way, reminds me of The Digger's in Deaver's THE DEVIL'S TEARDROP).

Overall, despite its initial promise, EVEN STEVEN is a thin, anemic effort that doesn't match up to NATHAN'S RUN or even AT ALL COSTS. I hope that John Gilstrap takes greater care with his next effort.