Review of The Fugitive (The Border Series Book 5)

[Valentine Mutaki]

[i][Following is a volunteer review of "The Fugitive (The Border Series Book 5)" by David Griffith.][/i]

[rwc=id494597-125]3 out of 4 stars.[/rwc]I am an avid fan of action books and mysteries. However, it takes hard-packed action and gripping tales to wrap my attention from start to finish. [i]The Fugitive[/i] by David Griffith is none of your mainstream action and mystery book. It is the fifth installation in a five-book series that goes a notch higher by gripping your every sense into its clutches. [i]The Fugitive[/i] narrates the story of a retired mercenary who used to work for an American Intelligence agency, Stirling Associates, infiltrating the Mexican drug cartels. After retirement, he escaped into what he thought was the remotest place on earth, a land with harsh environmental conditions, where if the grizzlies didn't make short work of you, the carrion birds would, a land so remote that it could only be accessed by helicopter, so cold that you only had a month of warm weather, a land that was aptly landscaped by the Blackwater river that could clutch you in its grip, drown you or drop you off the precipice, to die in the rapids or the rocks below. That is the land where our hero fugitive chose to settle with his family.



It is only too bad that the infamous Mexican cartels ''never forget''. Having spent about a decade from any threats of any kind, our fugitive, Lonnie Bowers is lulled into a false sense of security that lasts long enough to place him in the sights of a world-renowned assassin. He barely survives with a fatal wound. Between a stepbrother who harbored a grudge from the past against him, a neighbor who hates native Indians and wishes to shoot any of them om sight, an assassin who was paid top-dollar to exterminate him, the local police who are onto him for murder, and international cartels baying for his blood, it is a check-mate game to see who gets to him first before he takes himself to the lion's den, of his own accord. He has a cat's nine lives. However, he manages to carelessly place his family and himself in unwarranted danger enough times for the reader to feel annoyed at him and just wish he would end it sooner.



I loved the book for all its flowery idioms, a description that placed you at the scene to appreciate the landscape, the many horses and lovable family as well as the inflections of religion that were few and far between but just enough to appreciate the role of divinity in the whole tale. David Griffith puts an effort into using colorful expressions and plot-enhancing styles that place you exactly at the different scenes and make you feel the intensity of all the action in the book. Readers will find it hard to put this down.

However, there are some scenes that are described more than once, albeit, with differing colorful expressions without which, the reader would find boring.



I will rate this book [b]three out of four stars[/b] because of the gripping story, the effort placed in using extra-ordinary language to weave the narrative. The book is professionally edited although a few grammatical errors need to be ironed out to give the book a deserved four-star rating.



I recommend this book to an audience that enjoys action books, mysteries, or thrillers that grip you from start to finish, with no lulls or gags in their narration. I hadn't read the other books in the 5 book Border Series, so I will definitely go for them.

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[i]The Fugitive (The Border Series Book 5) [/i]
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