Shot
 Jenny Siler
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2002 John Macrae/Henry Holt
  ISBN: 0805072039


Seeking the truth about her scientist husband's sudden death, Lucy Greene & her childhood friend, recently fired tv journalist, stumble onto lethal secrets about a government biological warfare program.

Lucy had known Carl as a very careful man, so when the Pryor police tell her he must have fallen asleep at the wheel, & was killed when his car veered off a lonely, night-darkened, rain-slicked road on the Olympic Peninsula, she just can't believe it. What was he doing out there so far from Seattle where he had told her he was going for yet another conference?

After Carl's funeral & the long casserole-laden reception, Lucy drinks herself into a stupor on her lonely bed in their spacious, hollow home. When she is roused by a strange sound, she finds her Glock 26 in her side table & stalks the intruder. Even though she's a good shot, she misses the dark shadow that comes barreling out of Carl's office.

In the bright light of day, Lucy convinces herself that it was simply a meth head looking for something to sell, & decides not to tell the police.

Before Carl had set out for his last business trip to the Elwha Beach on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, he had made a call to Kevin Burns, a discredited tv journalist kicking his heels in New York, wondering what to do with his life. Carl's call rouses him out of his doldrums, & he returns to Colorado to meet with Carl in the hopes of a story that will re-invent his career. Except Carl doesn't show at the Coors Field. Kevin is no stranger to Colorado & decides to drive out to his home town & look up his childhood sweetheart, who happens to be married to Carl.

Darcy Williams, a recent guest of Colorado State in its Canyon Correction Center of the East Ophir Complex, waits for her ex-warden & current blackmailer to show up at Rawhide Bob's Frontier Town. She's trying to keep her junkie younger sister safe inside, by doing Warden Billings' dirty work -- breaking & entering that recently widow's home, looking for files on a TB program conducted in the network of prisons.

In a whirlwind of surprises & encounters, Lucy, Kevin & Darcy collide, pool their resources & take a helter-skelter drive across the Western states, following clues & stumbling into cover-ups, barely hours in front of their pursuers. They form an uneasy trust, leaving in their wake endangered relatives & panicked counter culture communes.

Another hair-raising, fast-paced, evocative thriller from Jenny Siler -- about childhood friends, biological warfare experiments in prison populations, & unlikely loyalties.

Jenny Siler's writing is lean, mean & clean -- she gives the Reader enough history to bring everyone to life & then tells her story with relentlessly focused intensity.

The ending is classic Siler -- & leaves you praying she'll write another book.

Very well done!

More from Jenny Siler: Easy Money & Iced & our author Interview
(10/27/02)

Rebecca