Even Steven [Kindle Edition]

John Gilstrap (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Author John Gilstrap's last thriller, Nathan's Run, was a fast-paced, deftly plotted tour de force about a kid in trouble. In his newest, the author serves up another child-in-danger plot, not quite as scary but touching a more sentimental nerve. Bobby and Susan Martin are still grieving the stillborn son who represented their five-year dream of a family of their own. When a frightened toddler escapes from his kidnappers and plunges into the clearing in the West Virginia mountains where the Martins have pitched their camp, he seems to Susan like the answer to her prayers. And when Bobby shoots the man pursuing the little boy, what seemed at first like a justifiable homicide turns into a nightmare; the pursuer is a cop. Bobby wants to surrender himself and the silent child to the authorities, but after several failed pregnancies, Susan is less willing to give up the boy she almost immediately names Steven, after her dead son. Meanwhile, April, the boy's mother, learns he was taken to satisfy a gambling debt incurred by her ne'er-do-well husband. Gilstrap deftly sets April's search in motion, taking her into a criminal underworld of drugs, extortion, and murder and setting up a heart-tugging situation in which the reader isn't sure whom to root for--the child's real mother, trapped by circumstances, or Susan Martin, who'll do anything to keep him. This explosive thriller ends in a hail of bullets, a climax well worth waiting for after a page-turning read that should earn its author a following of new fans. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly

Corny internal monologues drag down this action-packed third novel by Gilstrap (Nathan's Run; At All Costs), featuring an ill-starred childless couple and a hapless young mom caught between the cops and the bad guys. Still grieving over the recent stillbirth of their first child, a son they named Steven, Susan and Bobby Martin are on a camping trip in the mountains of West Virginia to mark their fifth wedding anniversary when they encounter a frightened little boy and a suspicious man claiming to be his father. After the stranger pulls a gun, Bobby kills him in the ensuing struggle. Finding police ID on the corpse and fearing the consequences of having killed a cop, the Martins take the boy and flee. Having suffered several miscarriages before the stillbirth, Susan believes that God intends the boy to replace Steven. Meanwhile, in nearby Pittsburgh, down-on-her-luck April Simpson discovers that a local drug dealer has kidnapped her two-year-old son, Justin, to hold as a hostage until he can collect a debt from her ne'er-do-well husband. Desperate for her child's safety, April threatens a mob boss with blackmail and is arrested while attempting armed robbery of a department store. Elsewhere, on a rundown farm, the brother of the man Bobby killed is anguishing over not having come to his sibling's rescue. The hero-protagonist (of sorts) who connects all three stories is aging FBI agent Russell Coates, himself embroiled in an old bull/young bull struggle for king of the hill. Although underdeveloped characters, hokey escapes and rescues replete with pulp romance epiphanies give the thriller a comic opera ring, its swift forward motion will speed readers past its flaws. Agent, Molly Friedrich. 7-city author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 636 KB
• Publisher: Atria Books; Reprint edition (March 18, 2003)
• Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000FC0O2M
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #97,520 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

John Gilstrap is the New York Times bestselling author of Threat Warning (July, 2011), Hostage Zero, No Mercy, Nathan's Run, At All Costs, Even Steven, Scott Free and Six Minutes to Freedom. In addition, John has written four screenplays for Hollywood, adapting the works of Nelson DeMille, Norman McLean and Thomas Harris. Most recently, he has signed two movie deals for his books. He will write and co-produce the film adaptation of his book, Six Minutes to Freedom, and executive produce the film adaptation of Scott Free.

A frequent speaker at literary events, John also teaches seminars on suspense writing techniques at a wide variety of venues, from local libraries to The Smithsonian Institution. Outside of his writing life, John is a renowned safety expert with extensive knowledge of explosives, hazardous materials, and fire behavior. He currently works as the director of safety for a large trade association in Washington, DC. John lives in Fairfax, VA.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE CHASE GOES ON, September 29, 2000

By 

Nancy Martin (Pennsylvania (orig. NY)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Even Steven (Hardcover)

It's quite obvious to fans of John Gilstrap that this is an author who likes the "chase". In his debut novel, Nathan's Run, he had 12 year old Nathan Bailey being chased by the cops. In his second novel, At All Costs, the entire Donovan family was being chased by the FBI. Now in his third novel, Even Steven, Gilstrap has stayed true to form as we find Susan and Bobby Martin being chased by the cops, the FBI and a kidnapper.

In this book, Gilstrap gives us three concurrent stories that you know will eventually be neatly tied together by this skillful author. In Maryland, Susan and Bobby Martin have been disappointed one too many times in trying to have a baby. After their last mishap, they decide to take a camping trip to West Virginia to regroup and celebrate their wedding anniversary. In Pittsburgh, April Simpson returns home from work to find out that her three year old son Justin has been kidnapped. In West Virginia, two brothers, Jacob and Samuel, have been hired out to kidnap a child. You will travel from state to state during this chase led by FBI agent Russell Coates.

The opening scene finds Susan and Bobby relaxing at their campsite when their peaceful evening is disturbed by a screaming child who is obviously running away from someone. While trying to quiet the child, a man comes running into the clearing claiming to be the boy's father. The couple realize that something is not right with this scenario and challenge the man. A fight ensues, someone is killed and the "chase" begins.

Those familiar with Gilstrap now know they will be in for the ride of their lives. As with his other two books, it is a fast- paced page turner and, midway through the book, you can't imagine how this will ever turn out OK. As the FBI begins to close in, Agent Coates has his own doubts as to the actual suspects at the same time that the reader does.

I became a fan of this author when I read Nathan's Run three years ago. I now anxiously await every new book he writes knowing that I will never be disappointed. He's one of a kind in a class all his own. I envy anyone who hasn't read his books yet knowing that they have some wonderful surprises ahead of them.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A plot to be plowed through, not savored., April 9, 2001

By 

Robert Crawford (Hudson, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Even Steven (Hardcover)

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.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Full of activity , excitement, and danger., March 20, 2001

By 

Betti Trapp - See all my reviews

This review is from: Even Steven (Hardcover)

Even Steven was one of the better books I have read in awhile. The story begins with a young couple, camping outdoors on a romantic weekend with the hopes of overcoming their pain of not being able to have a child. Mysteriously, a child comes running from the woods, screaming, a toddler. The couple then becomes involved in a game of cat and mouse, a web of murder and drug smuggling, kidnapping, and intrigue. Their lives are turned upside down in a matter of an hour. The story is fast paced and interesting, and will keep you turning pages. The ending is....well, can't give that one away, let's just say it is an interesting turn of events. This author has a great grasp on how to entice and hold onto a reader.