|
FBI Witness Protection Agent Roland Larson has committed the unpardonable --- he has fallen in love with Hope Stevens, the whistle-blowing accountant under his safeguard. Hope holds vital information needed to convict members of the notorious Romero crime family in the only way that insures that her life is worth no more than the seconds it would take to remove it --- from her mind.
Safehouses are proved to be anything but safe as a merciless and ruthless contract killer pursues Hope with relentless fervor, killing anyone who has come in contact with her. Finally, knowing the government cannot provide the security it has promised, and torn between her feelings for her protector and fear for her life, Hope vanishes.
Larson is haunted by his failure to shield the woman he loves, and is haunted by her disappearance. Six years later, the computer expert who designed the triple-blinded Witness Protection computer program, which lists names, family members, pseudonyms and locations of every protected witness in the system, has been kidnapped. The Romero family is behind the kidnapping, and if the code is cracked the information will compromise thousands of witnesses, with Hope at the top of the list. Larson is called back on the case to help find the kidnapped programmer. In a darkened St. Louis Shakespearean theater, he is sure he hears her laughter, but he is not the only one who knows she is there. When he discovers that she is now the mother of a five-year-old daughter, he is torn between his personal feelings and his duty to the government.
CUT AND RUN is a stand-alone novel that finds Ridley Pearson at the top of his game. As Larson follows the trail of the killer in pursuit of Hope and her daughter in a nationwide chase, we are caught up in one of the tautest cat-and-mouse thrillers in Pearson's vivid collection of novels. With his long-standing Lou Boldt detective fiction apparently on hold, we're happy to see this talented writer providing more thrills and great reading for his fans.
--- Reviewed by Roz Shea
 Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com.
© Copyright 1996-2008, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
Back to top.
|
