Friday, May 17, 2013

Blood Drama


Blood Drama, the new crime fiction thriller from Christopher Meeks, is Meeks's first venture into genre fiction.  Now, let's hope it is not his last, because this one is great fun.

When Ian Nash, a Southern California graduate student, unexpectedly finds himself callously dropped from his theatre Ph.D. program, he realizes that more than just his future expectations have changed.  Now, because he was fired from his teaching duties at the same time he was booted from the program, Ian is also without a source of income.  And because a man needs money to survive, Ian decides to apply for work in a little bank lobby coffee shop on his way home from the university. 

His day is about to get a whole lot worse.

What begins as just another Los Angeles bank robbery suddenly goes very wrong.  As Ian watches from his assigned spot on the coffee shop floor, shots are fired, people die, and, when the police show up, he is horrified to be chosen as the designated hostage to accompany the robbers to their escape vehicle.  He will be even more horrified when he realizes that one of the robbers is determined to eliminate any chance that Ian will be around long enough to identify the gang to FBI investigators.  If he wants to live, Ian has to find a way to escape and soon.

Christopher Meeks
Blood Drama is very much a thriller, but it is a thriller with a romantic twist.  Ian Nash, as are several male characters from previous Christopher Meeks novels and stories, is a well-intentioned, but rather naive, bumbler who sometimes overestimates his own abilities.  He combines innocence and recklessness in a way that endears him to the reader as much as it confounds the other characters in the novel.  One can only imagine why he believes himself more capable of finding the bank robbers than the FBI, even to running his own sting, but he does.  And when Ian begins to woo the beautiful Latina FBI agent officially in charge of the investigation, we see that his basic optimism about the future remains intact. 

Ian Nash is not an easily defeated man.  He is a winner in spite of himself, and we love him for that.

(Review Copy provided by Publisher)

4 comments:

  1. When you described him as a bumbler, I thought of Columbo, but that was more of an act, wasn't it?

    I'm glad you're back!

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  2. I've missed you so am relieved to see you posting once again. Hope all is well.
    Elizabeth

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  3. The difference Susan is that this character is strictly an amateur when it comes to catching crooks...not a pro like Columbo. Good book.

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  4. Elizabeth, thanks so much for the kind remark. Increasing family obligations are causing a real time crunch for me at the moment and I don't see things easing up anytime soon, unfortunately. I am part of that "sandwich generation" with family obligations on both sides of my own age group. It's not always easy but that's why they call it "family." I hope to do some blogging but it will, I'm sure, be limited for a while to come. Thanks again.

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I always love hearing from you guys...that's what keeps me book-blogging. Thanks for stopping by.