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Last Gasp by Carla Cassidy |
| (Signet, $7.99, PG, V) ISBN 978-0-451-22660-0 |
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| Fifteen year priors to the opening of Last Gasp, teenager Allison Clemmins, upon returning home from school, opened the front door, and was struck in the head from behind and left for dead. When the sheriff arrived after a call from her father, they found a grisly scene. The death toll included Allison's brother, sister and mother who had been decapitated by an axe. Her father was convicted of the murders and has been in prison since that time.
Recovery for Allison has been a slow process, and part of it involved a year in a mental hospital immediately following the murders. Upon her return, her Aunt Maureen and Uncle David living in the same small Midwestern Kansas town, took her to live with them. Allison completed her education and is now teaching in the same town where she had grown up.. The calm, slow pace of small town living is jarred when attorney Seth Walker arrives. He is affiliated with an organization dedicated to righting the wrongs caused by convicting innocent people of crimes. Seth is convinced that Allison's father fits this profile, and he is in town to see if he can find enough evidence to reopen the case. Allison is the single parent of her twelve year old son Sam. Sam's father Bobby was her first love and helped her get through the rough time following the murders. They married young; while acting his immature age, Bobby caused and died in a car accident. Carla Cassidy does a wonderful job of character creation in this story. Subtle little touches round out multi dimensional principals, together with a tremendous cast of secondary characters and subplots. She captures the warmth and familiarity of small town living, utilizing it in imaginative ways to heighten tension and to foreshadow the events possibly set in motion by Seth's acts of investigation. Early on, Seth persuades a reluctant Allison to work with him; he convinces her that if there is the slightest chance her father is innocent, she owes him the effort. A double murder is committed that in many ways parallels the slaying of Allison's family; the town now begins to wonder if Allison's father is in fact innocent. The romance between Seth and Allison is kindled fairly swiftly and the multiple tensions arising from the romance and the murder investigation run together with this author's usual artful pacing.
The plot starts evolving into what the reader believes is a pretty standard and often used storyline, when suddenly the author begins her surprises. The originality and the compelling characters make Last Gap an excellent read.
--Thea Davis |
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