The White Van: Review.
Emily wakes up – sort of – to find herself alone in a hotel room. As she comes round, she remembers that she’d been in a bar and met a man – a Russian.
No, it was nothing like that – she hadn’t exactly been picked up and there’d been no activity of the type normally associated with situations where two people of the opposite sex who met in abar ended up in a hotel room together.
But what was she doing here? Her head felt so fuzzy – had she been drugged? What was going on? She remembered that he’s given her two hundred dollars – for what?
Emily was a streetwise drug hustler but this time, she seemed to be at someone else’s mercy.
A fascinating plot
When I read the first few pages of this book,I admit I was a little dubious. Reading about drugs and backstreet goings-on isn’t normally my cup of tea.
But within a couple of pages,I was mildly hooked. A few more pages in and I was completely intrigued.
Emily spent several days in the hotel room.She wasn’t molested, in fact she was treated rather well by the Russian and a mysterious older woman, also from Russia.
They gave her food, presented her with a new outfit, took photographs of her … and kept her drugged. What did they want with her?
This was soon revealed but the Russians’ plans went wrong when Emily refused to obey them. Then, she found herself waking up in a forest with abag handcuffed to her wrist. She looked inside. There was a loaded gun. Underneath was a bomb, yes, a bomb.
She realised that she had another bag with her too – examining this she discovered it contained a fortune in hundred dollar bills.
This is the sort of book you have to keep reading. You’ll probably skip lunch so that you don’t have to put it down.
Then we meet a middle-aged cop, Leo. He’s not a happy man. His house is due to be foreclosed, he’s unhappily married and his new cop partner irritates him. He learns about a strange bank robbery that has taken place. He’s not assigned to it, but decides to investigate this unusual robbery. He suspects that the bank manager, a Russian woman, was part of the gang who robbed the bank.
Then his path crosses with Emily’s.
If you’ve read any of my other book reviews, you’ll know that the sleazy underworld of San Francisco, cops, drugs and mysterious Russians aren’t really my normal reading matter. But boy, this is a great book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
