Even Steven

Author John Gilstrap's last thriller, __, 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

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.)
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