If I Run
Terri Blackstock
Zondervan, February 2016
ISBN 978-0-3103-3243-5
Trade Paperback
Casey is in the classic “wrong place, wrong time” situation.
The wrong place is her best friends Brent’s apartment. The wrong time is finding his body.
With Brent’s blood on her shoes and knowing the police can trace the shoes to her, she runs.
Casey is a good girl, but her dad was a police officer so she knows her way around forensics and disappearing. With the remains of her inheritance, she’s on the lam; hiding her car, taking a bus and paying cash, finding a man who will make her a false ID. This goes against her grain, but she knows she has no chance if law enforcement tracks her down.
Dylan was in the Criminal Investigations Division in the army and spent time in Afghanistan. Now he’s home and faced with attending the funeral of his best friend, Brent. He and Brent grew up together and Brent’s parents were like his own. They don’t think the local police are doing enough to find Brent’s killer, who they suspect is a woman named Casey, so they hire Brent to track her down. The local police accept Dylan’s help and one of the CID detectives, Keegan, is his contact.
Casey manages to make it to Atlanta when she gets in contact with her sister, Hannah, who sends her a thumb drive Brent left for her and the information on the drive fills in all the blanks about Casey’s father’s death…as well as giving a motive for Brent’s killing and the killer.
This is a tight, tense chase novel with a slight twist. Casey can’t let go of her do-gooder inclinations so even as she’s hiding out, she uncovers what happened to a young girl who went missing years ago on the night of her prom.
Reminiscent of “The Fugitive,” this book is a classic chase with Casey using all her knowledge to keep one step ahead of Dylan. With a cliff-hanger ending, Ms. Blackstock undoubtedly has more episodes of Casey and Dylan’s story.
Reviewed by Michele Drier, February 2016.
Author of Delta for Death and SNAP: All That Jazz.
Buried Under Books 