Intent to Kill

Ryan James, a washed-up minor-league baseball player, is now a shock jock on a sports-radio talk show. He uses alcohol and anger to get by and to ease the pain of his wife's fatal car crash three years ago. Now an anonymous tipster claims he knows the identity of the drunk driver who caused the crash. Jonathan Davis's skilled narration depicts the misery of Ryan's existence and his new agony at the revelation that the crash was not an accident. Davis depicts Ryan's autistic brother-in-law, Babes, with depth, portraying his strange intelligence and the devotion to baseball he shares with Ryan. Davis's well-paced narration eases the occasional slow spots in an otherwise fast-paced thriller. N.M.C. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

March 15, 2009
In Grippando's limp latest, what looks like unpremeditated vehicular homicide isn't.

Twenty-something Chelsea James, exemplary wife and mom, is on her way to McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, R.I., to see her husband play what might be his last game as a minor leaguer. Ryan,"six feet three and 220 pounds of athletic ability," is headed for"the Bigs," the smart money says. But Chelsea never gets to the ball park, and Ryan's can't-miss trip to glory gets derailed when a drunk driver rams Chelsea's car, then vanishes. Chelsea's killed, two-year-old Ainsley, strapped securely in her car seat, is bruised, and Ryan's shattered. He so adored his wife that he meant it literally when he said he couldn't live without her. Three years later, Ryan, now co-host of a popular morning sports-talk radio program in Boston, has in fact managed to live without Chelsea, but clearly he's a lesser Ryan. Gone is his baseball career and, with it, his sleep. He's so locked into insomnia that in three years his grief counselor has been unable to pry him loose. And then suddenly, Chelsea's death, the coldest of cold cases, heats back up. Secret agendas, long buried, become manifest; friends turn into enemies; conspiracies emerge. When is vehicular homicide not vehicular homicide? When it's premeditated murder, of course.

Unpersuasive plot contrivances and clunky prose add up to a pedestrian effort from a writer who's done better work (Born to Run, 2008, etc.).

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February 15, 2009
Grippando takes a break from the Jack Swyteck seriessome readers would call it a much-needed breakand delivers a fine stand-alone thriller. Ryan James was an up-and-coming baseball player, a minor leaguer who seemed destined for the majors. Then a car accident took the life of his wife, Chelsea, and now, three years later, he cohosts a sports-themed talk radio show while raising his young daughter and trying not to fall into an alcoholic spiral. Out of nowhere, on the third anniversary of Chelseas death, an anonymous tipster claims not only that her death was no accident but also that he knows who killed her. Teaming up with Emma Carlisle, the prosecutor in charge of the hit-and-run case, Ryan uncovers a conspiracy that puts his own life at risk. This is an excellent thriller, the kind of novel Grippando was turning out on a regular basis before he began devoting his time to the increasingly formulaic Swyteck series. Its a return to the character-driven storytelling that made his earlier novels, including Found Money (1999), The Abduction (1998), and The Informant (1996), so successful. Ryan is a strong, sympathetic lead, and the supporting cast, including Emma Carlisle and Babes, Chelseas autistic brother, is uniformly excellent. The story is convoluted but not excessively so and has a satisfying resolution. Grippando readers who know him mostly from the Swyteck series may find themselves thinking: wow, this guy is really good.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)