Escape Clause

This author is remarkably knowledgeable from his past on the FDLE (Florida Department of Law Enforcement) and uses this experience to really captivate the reader as Born creates so many compex but easy to follow interactions between his large cast of characters. It was a book that kept me hooked until the last in wanting to find out which of the bad guys did it. The conclusion was both riveting and satisfying.

Some people are always in the right place at the right time; others aren't. Florida lawman Bill Trasker is the latter. Just off a stressful case, he was standing in line at the bank with his 8-year-old daughter when a bank robbery ensued. To help him unwind, his boss sent him to do a review on an inmate homicide at a secluded prison. Bill's trouble magnet, however, continued working at high capacity. Murder, attempted murder (of Bill), kidnapping, and a prison break move Bill's temporary duty from simple to complex and dangerous. Those same complications make for a compelling, fast-paced thriller! James O. Born is now on my must-be-read list.

James Born is on a roll. Following up on his first two novels, Walking Money and Shock Wave, Born goes on to hit three in a row with his main man, James Tasker of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE)and an assortment of new charactter, plus some returning characters from the previous novels. After stopping a bank robbery while there as a customer, Tasker is given a job during his cooling off period of investigating the death of a prisoner at Manatee Prison. The prisoner is the son of a well connected citizen and the governor has asked FDLE to look into it. On his way to the prison, he is stopped for speeding by a state trooper named Miko which sets up an interesting piece of dialogue about FDLE people which seems to haunt Tasker throughout all three novels: "I'm a cop." "Do you have any ID?" "Yes,Sir." "Slowly reach for it and show it to me." Upon showing him his badge the trooper says: "I thought you said you were a cop." "I am. Look, with FDLE." "You guys have uniforms?" "Nope." "Work shifts?" "Nope." "Drive marked cars?" "Obviously not." "Then how can you call yourselves cops?" Well, as the story unfolds involving correctional people, local police, lunatic inmates, some very attractive ladies and others in the area of Gladesville, Florida it becomes apparent that Tasker is very much a cop and that he is sticking his nose into things that will become hazardous to his health. When he first broke on to the literary scene I mentioned that Florida had produced some well known and very successful novelists who use the Florida scene and lifestyle and that if he continued in this vein he would be joining some select company. Suffice it to say that Mr. Born is no longer an aspiring novelist in this genre...he has arrived. As this novel concludes and all of the questions are answered and all of the bad guys are brought to heel, the guarantee of a fourth novel is set out with the meeting of two characters from novels one and two. What antics these two will cook up for Bill Tasker and others is just so delicioius to contemplate, but in the meantime, this book is a keeper. All of them are!!

James Born has south Florida down hot! He brings the area vividly to life with an authenticity developed by someone who has apparently served his time on the streets as an investigator at the bottom of the pyramid, a guy who knows what it means to be doing the grunt work. To that he adds a finely tuned sense of how organizational politics work, from the local level through the state and federal cops and on to the big hitters in Tallahassee. His hero, Tasker, is an idealist in a cynical world and you can't help root for a guy with such "ah shucks" optimism, honesty and sincerity. Born is a student of human behavior and knows what motivates people, he hones in on the essence of his characters, which makes them interesting, real and alive. There are plenty of plot twists to keep one turning the pages. The dialogue is "spot on" and flows effortlessly, the characters are real because each one is dented and bruised by life, including the hero, Tasker, but each tries to manage with what he/she has to bring to the game, and what the game brings to them. His assortment of DOC oddballs, on both sides of the barbed wire, range from comical to vicious. While leaving no loose ends to ponder he also skillfully leaves the door open for some interesting future entanglements. Looking forward to Born's next romp in the slightly screwy, but never dull world of Bill Tasker.

It's always exciting to pick up a novel by an author who started off with great work and who keeps getting better with each new book. Jim Born fits that description. ESCAPE CLAUSE, his third novel featuring Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) agent Bill Tasker, is easily his best, not an easy mark to reach considering the high quality of WALKING MONEY and SHOCK WAVE, his first two novels. Tasker is, it would seem, a natural creation for Born, given Born's FDLE status as a special agent, his former membership of the FDLE special-ops team, and his duty as a DEA agent and as a deputy U.S. Marshal. Born's background, however, constitutes only half of the equation, which results in the addictive nature of his novels. Along with his real-world background, Born can write. While reading ESCAPE CLAUSE, one gets the feeling that they are not so much turning pages as looking at scenes unfurl across a canvas, or, better yet, watching the private screening of a riveting film. Born infuses a real-world setting into his narrative, eschewing dramatic exaggeration and concentrating on the believability of his characters to move his story along. Tasker accordingly is a likable, not perfect guy, smart but not brilliant, tough but not indestructible. He has real-world domestic problems as a single dad, which he resolves well if not perfectly. Tasker is also a bit of a babe-magnet, but they aren't falling into his bed within an hour of meeting him. And when he shoots someone, even in self-defense, Tasker has the grace to feel bad about it. When Tasker is involved in a shooting incident while breaking up a bank robbery, his supervisor sends him on what is supposedly a restful assignment: investigating what appears to be an inmate homicide at the ill-named Manatee Correctional Facility. Born, while introducing Tasker into Manatee, subtly makes the facility a secondary character in ESCAPE CLAUSE, and a realistic one. The prison is not a hell hole, though it is certainly not one in which you would choose to spend an evening. And, it seems, there is as much to fear from the administration of the facility as there is from the inmates. It becomes clear that at least some guards --- from the bottom on up --- are trying to stymie Tasker's investigation, if not scare him off entirely. The resistance, however, only causes Tasker to dig in deeper, and when his next-door neighbor comes to harm, Tasker begins to take the resistance personally. His biggest problem though is finding someone he can trust --- his list keeps getting shorter, even as the methods used to stymie his investigation become more and more deadly. Events reach a cataclysmic and ultimately ironic end, from which Tasker learns who his friends, and enemies, truly are. Born is nothing less than a marvel, a writer who in the short space of a few novels has made a multitude of must-read lists. And, speaking of must-reads, ESCAPE CLAUSE sets up a possible plot line for the next Tasker novel, which hopefu