Customer Reviews

Run the Risk (Playaway Adult Fiction)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Lt. Alex Delillo, of the L.A. police department homicide squad, is investigating the killing of an owner of a local Los Angeles florist. She and her partner arrive at the home of one of the florist shop's employees, to question him. However, the door is rigged with explosives. Alex's partner is hospitalized but is expected to recover.

Just prior to the report of the murder, Alex's teenage daughter, Lacy, created a near riot at a beauty pagent when she removed two cyllinders from beneath her gown and informed the audience that they were poisonioning the planet just for a parade.

Believing that the cyllinders contained poison, the crowd panicked. Alex and other police calmed the drown and Lacy admitted that the cyllinders only contained insecticide. Alex is furious and wonders how her daughter has changed so quickly from the daughter she knew six months ago, who was most comfortable in jeans and T-shirts.

With Alex's partner injured, she begins working with Detective Dylon Harrison who was in the bomb squad. Maybe it's a needed quality to have in the unit he's in but Harrison has a calming influence on Alex, and, as we will later see, he also has this beneficial quality with victims.

Soon after a body is found in a remote area and identification shows him to be a member of the Mexican army. Los Angeles officials speculate that he may have brought bomb making material to the area.

Lacy goes missing and Alex and Harrison search the home of a part time employee at the florist. Here, they find a man strapped to a chair with bombs set to explode. Harrison disarms the bomb and the man admits that Lacy has been kidnapped by the man who set the explosives.

All of the exciting action is described realistically and the author, Scott Frost, draws the reader into the investigation and we become deeply concerned with the killer's plan to set off the explosives and Lt. Dilillo's attempt to stop him and save her daughter.

Readers will enjoy this thrilling book which was nominated for an Edgar Award.

3 1/2 stars moved up to 4 based on sympathetic characters, dealing with environmental issues and parent teenage child relationships.

A gripping, fantastic debut from the former X-Files and Twin Peaks script writer. This book is everything a suspense novel ought to be. The characters are wonderful, vivid, and realistic and the mystery is taut and suspenseful and leaves the reader with some serious moral questions at its conclusion. I give this one high, high praise and look forward to reading the author's next novel.

This novel was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best First Mystery/Crime novel of 2005, so I thought I would give it a shot. I was somewhat disappointed with it.

Los Angeles homicide detective Alex Delillo's daughter is kidnapped by a serial killer who likes to murder people with explosive devices. The novel basically deals with Delillo's race against time to save her daughter and catch the mad killer.

This book is fast-paced and decently written, but at the expense of character development. In many ways, this book resembles a non-stop action movie. The characters literally run from one implausable action scene (often involving a ticking bomb and an explosion) to another. The book never slows down and allows us to get to know these people. Many of the characters therefore end up rather sketchy and bland.

I also found the daughter character in this novel to be highly annoying, which is unfortunate since we are supposed to fear for her life. There are also many loose ends in RUN THE RISK that are not wrapped up in the ending.

Overall, I give this book a very mild recommendation. I would only recommend this novel to people looking for a good action read.

The main character is an emotional cripple, a crummy mom, a stupid cop, and physically unable to sit, stand, or lay down without the aid of some male underling's arms. Plot never really came together. Big disappointment.

The author's first book is reasonably standard serial killer fare. Female lieutenant Delillo is having some problems with her daughter which deepen when she discovers that there is a link between her daughter, some recent murders and a serial killer that has plans for both daughter and mother....

So we have a traditional race against time, as the cops investigate the links between a number of murders until the race becomes very personal...

I think for these things to work you need engaging characters, clever plotting, the odd twist or two and a dash of style. This is okay but doesn't quite tick any of those boxes well enough, although overall the book is acceptable without having that missing wow factor. This may bode well for the next books in the series as the author develops confidence and becomes mor familiar with his characters.

So, in summary, 'okay' but don't rush out for this one.

I'll skip the book description, you can find it elsewhere. So, my reaction as a reader.

I was caught up in the first few pages. The characters were people to me almost immediately, and remained so throughout the book. The mother-daughter tension was real (I don't have a daughter, but I am one.)

I sometimes had a bit of trouble with the clues, the actions of the characters, especially in the middle of the book.

But, when it came down to the last pages, I wanted to read every word, hoping that I could solve...I wished I was there to help.

So...I would recommend this book to anyone who likes this genre...and I personally will look forward to the author's next book. Until that comes out, this is an excellent read.

Scott Frost makes his formal novel debut with a scorchingly fascinating, roller coaster ride of a story set against the background of Pasadena, California during the time in which all eyes are on the sunny and elegant vestige of yesteryear - the New Year's Day Rose Parade. Frost understands the city and its environs and even for those of us who live here, he opens vistas with his word painting that bring into focus the 'city of perpetual New Year's Day sunlight' and makes that atmosphere add to the fine story of this first novel.

Frost has established writing credentials: he has been a scriptwriter for "Twin Peaks" and "Life Goes On". And perhaps that is why this particular novel feels so cinematic. Few writers can top his conversational tone, written in such distinctive voices that the out-of-quotes 'he said/she said' become obsolete. Every character in this book is so well defined that were they to pass us on the street we would gasp and think 'I know him'.

Frost places the narration of RUN THE RISK in his main character Alex Delillo, a divorced/widowed mother of a teenage girl Lacy who just happens to be a Homicide detective on the Pasadena Police Force. Alex and Lacy are in the expected struggle that occurs between mother/daughter in the daughter's high school years. The tone of this story is set when Lacy, a Pasadena Rose Queen princess, jolts the proper Pasadenans by spraying pesticide on the crowd as her name is called in the crowning proceedings. This 'environmentalist' gesture sets into motion a series of incidents that begin with bombs and murders in the florist environs closely associated with the incipient Rose Parade. Lacy disappears and Alex begins her investigation of what becomes an intensive and razor-sharp search for a man thought to be a terrorist bomber bent on gaining world recognition by setting off a bomb on millions of television screens observing the famous Rose Parade. But Alex in tandem with a bomb expert Harrison slowly realize that they are not dealing with a terrorist but a serial killer. Lacy is being held hostage and the one person who can bring this all to a climax is Lacy's terrified but determined mother Alex!

How all this weaves into a running series of shocking events, each surprising the reader with gory details and propelling the speed of page turning, is the structure of the novel. But in contrast to other writers of this genre, Frost has created a protagonist in Alex Delillo who holds not only our attention but our complete empathy, a character so real in her emotions that she quashes all previous perceptions of the hard woman cop.

And as this weren't sufficient to place Frost in the prominent arena of fine thriller writers, he also generously displays his sensitive observations of a city and environs like few other writers. "Driving through the garment and jewelry districts of downtown L.A. is like stepping back into a fifty-year-old Kodachrome home movie of Mexico City. Garish colors of cheap clothes and custom jewelry spill out of storefront onto the sidewalks like a street festival. The sweet smells of corn tortillas and diesel fumes drift in the air. Salsa music competes with mariachi, which competes with sirens and street crime and broken dreams carried from dirt shacks south of the border. It's a place unknown to most inhabitants of the City of Angels, as distant from the gated homes of the Hollywood Hills as a Third World shantytown."

In the end Frost sets us up for a sequel but does so in a way that avoids our frustration that we are being milked, replacing that with an intense interest in just what more can Alex Delillo accomplish. This is a well-written, exciting, tense novel that suggests that Scott Frost will be an increasingly vital force in contemporary fiction. Grady Harp, February 2005

PLEASE scroll up this page and purchase this book before you do ANYTHING else!! I am a voracious reader - primarily thrillers and psychological suspense - and this first book from Scott Frost is one of the BEST books I've EVER had the pleasure to read!!

While I thrilled to the pacing, style, and content of the book, I also enjoyed the author's observations through the eyes of the book's heroine. Alex is a female cop - the Chief of Homicide - in a modern (still male-driven) Police force in So. California - Pasadina. She is also a mother of a teenager (and I'll leave it to you who also have been parents of teenagers to imagine WHICH job gives her the most problems). From the opening series of events, to the closing phrase, you, the reader, are asked to join in the team's efforts to "Run the Risk"!!! AND, YOU DO, willingly.

Run the Risk, as I take it from the book, is the term used by fire investigators when they have done all that they can in a situation, given the circumstances, their FULL professional expertise and experience, and are left with the time-sensitive need to make a decision: cut A wire; cut THE wire; cut the WIRES; cut the RED wire; cut the BLUE wire; but, still, DO SOMETHING or the bomb will go off!!

I found this parable to ring true for most of all that we do in the world today, given the speed of events we are faced with, and the consequences of our decisions. AND, the need we have to ACTUALLY LIVE with the results of that decision!!

I LOVED THIS BOOK!! As an "expert" in "serial killers", I found this one a new and truly horrifying one - even worse than Hannible Lecter!!!

I am running to obtain the next in this series. THANK YOU SCOTT FROST!!

I'm always searching for new authors and this one is a winner. Kept my interest and had a different twist from the run-of-the-mill thriller. Can't wait for more!

Run the Risk is the best mystery/adventure novel I've read. It was fine for the first two pages, captured my attention on page 3, then utterly engulfed my consciousness. Its pace was brisk by mystery standards, and it kept accelerating all the way to the end.

As a mystery, the plot has twists and turns to challenge the best minds to sort out at every particular moment what has already happened and what is about to happen. Mysteries traditionally focus on a buildup to "whodunnit", and there's definitely some of that in Run the Risk. However, it really shines in its portrayal of mind games, sorting out some VERY unconventional situations about what, how, and why. Most of the book is an ongoing mental duel pitting the detectives against a masterful criminal mind.

In some ways the feel is a bit like the best of season 1 of Twin Peaks. That might not be surprising given Scott Frost's earlier work on Twin Peaks... whether Twin Peaks influenced Frost or Frost influenced Twin Peaks would be an interesting question to explore. I suspect that the influence was mutual.