April's Affections and Intrigues: Love and Mystery Bloom

Final Approach, October 2009 by Rachel Brady Poisoned Pen Press Featuring: Richard Cole; Emily Locke 250 pages ISBN: 1590586557 EAN: 9781590586556 Hardcover Add to Wish List Purchase Amazon Barnes & Noble Powell's Books Books-A-Million Indie BookShop

"Going undercover at a skydiving event may turn out to be deadly"

Final Approach
Rachel Brady

Reviewed by Denise Powers
Posted September 21, 2009

Suspense

Ohio resident Emily Locke has begun to put the pieces of her life together after the deaths of her husband and young daughter four years ago when a blast from the past brings turbulent emotions to the forefront. Disgraced Austin police officer turned private investigator Richard Cole has come to ask for Emily's assistance in the case of a kidnapped child. The police believe it's a parental abduction but Richard's clients disagree. A skydiver's jump ticket was found outside the boy's house, leading Richard to suspect a skydiver is involved in the disappearance. Since Emily is the only skydiver he knows, she's his lifeline to that world.

Emily believes that Richard is responsible for the failure to get a conviction in the kidnapping of her friends' son. Now another boy is missing. Coincidence? As Emily gets to know the owners, staff and patrons of Gulf Coast Skydiving, she has flashbacks to the case that introduced her to Richard four years ago. Readers are gradually told the details through Emily's journal entries written when the events transpired. Emily's suspicious of several people at Gulf Coast Skydiving, including a pilot the missing boy's mother recognizes.

Just who is responsible for the kidnapping? Is this case linked in any way to the kidnapping four years ago? Emily's stumbled onto a conspiracy more far-reaching than she could ever have imagined. Will she live long enough to bring the kidnappers to justice? And just how does her family's deaths factor in this case?

FINAL APPROACH features an unusual protagonist—a female chemist who's also a skydiver. I do love books that feature women in the scientific field. The writing isn't very polished, but this may be due to being the author's debut novel. It's obvious that Ms. Brady is familiar with skydiving and her narrative covers skydiving basics without getting too technical. A surprising plot twist will have readers breathlessly racing through to the end.

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SUMMARY

Sometimes clues just fall from the sky. Four years ago Emily Locke's life was shattered when her infant daughter and husband were lost in an inexplicable accident. She has nearly rebuilt her fragile mental health when Richard Cole, a disgraced former police detective now working as a PI, resurfaces. He wants help he says only she can provide— reconnaissance at a Texas skydiving establishment over a thousand miles away. Emily knows better than to work with him again, but can't refuse when she learns it's about a missing boy. She identifies too greatly with the new missing child case.

At Gulf Coast Skydiving, similarities between this new case and Emily's troubled past make it increasingly difficult for her to stay objective. Soon she's convinced that she is somehow connected to whoever took little Casey Lyons. Someone at the quiet, rural airstrip knows what happened to the boy . . . and to Emily's own daughter.

To find Casey before it's too late, Emily will have to make sense of the menacing parallels between his case and her daughter's.

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