One Fatal Mistake

December 1, 2018
Hunt's first novel, Killer Choice (2018), featured a man who goes to extreme lengths to save his wife, and this time Hunt's protagonist is a mother who finds out how far she will go to protect her son. A series of extremely unfortunate events follows when 18-year-old Joshua Mayo takes a man's life and flees the scene. His bashed-up car makes his mother, Karen, suspicious, and when he confesses, she and Joshua head out to the scene of the crime, where they are taken hostage by bank robbers on the run. The odds of the robbers intersecting with Karen and Joshua in such a remote location are slim, but Hunt's careful pacing and plotting somehow make it all seem quite plausible. Joshua is a young man on a roller coaster of emotion, and Karen is a woman with bottomless empathy who is nevertheless being gradually hardened by coldhearted killers; although, as the story of each character is fully revealed, readers may find it difficult to be too judgmental. Recommended for fans of nail-biters in the tradition of Lee Child and Harlan Coben.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)