Jason Bourne meets The Sopranos in this breathtaking adventure
Sara Jane Rispoli is a normal sixteen-year-old coping with school and a budding romance--until her parents and brother are kidnapped and she discovers her family is deeply embedded in the Chicago Outfit (aka the mob).
Now on the run from a masked assassin, rogue cops and her turncoat uncle, Sara Jane is chased and attacked at every turn, fighting back with cold fury as she searches for her family. It's a quest that takes her through concealed doors and forgotten speakeasies--a city hiding in plain sight. Though armed with a .45 and 96K in cash, an old tattered notebook might be her best defense--hidden in its pages the secret to "ultimate power." It's why she's being pursued, why her family was taken, and could be the key to saving all of their lives.
Action packed, with fresh, cinematic writing, Cold Fury is a riveting and imaginative adventure readers will devour.
Gr 8-10-Sara Jane Rispoli is no ordinary teen. While she's worried about the regular stuff-boys, friends, and the upcoming school dance-she also has to contend with situations nobody her age should. Coming home after school one day, she finds her front door ajar and the house ransacked. While investigating, she is attacked by a large man in a black ski mask. Her instincts take over, and she begins an epic run for her life that, she hopes, will uncover the truth about why her family vanished and whether or not they are still alive. While some passages of this story are engaging, including action sequences that are forthright and expeditious, they can't mask the weaker elements, including unrealistic dialogue and poor characterization. While Sara Jane's uncle and his mysterious wife serve their intended purpose as the novel's chief antagonists, their motivations are never clear enough to justify why they are willing to kill Sara for her mysterious silver briefcase. Crooked Detective Smelt and her seemingly endless army of evil police officers are more like campy caricatures than believable villains. Sara Jane herself is never really a protagonist readers will get behind, as she seems more interested in cracking corny jokes about those chasing her than actually saving the family she claims to care so much about.-Ryan Donovan, New York Public Libraryα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
T. M. Goeglein lives in Chicago, Illinois. This is his first book.