Run the Risk

PLEASE scroll up this page and purchase this book before you do ANYTHING else!! I am a voracious reader - primarily thrillers and psychological suspense - and this first book from Scott Frost is one of the BEST books I've EVER had the pleasure to read!! While I thrilled to the pacing, style, and content of the book, I also enjoyed the author's observations through the eyes of the book's heroine. Alex is a female cop - the Chief of Homicide - in a modern (still male-driven) Police force in So. California - Pasadina. She is also a mother of a teenager (and I'll leave it to you who also have been parents of teenagers to imagine WHICH job gives her the most problems). From the opening series of events, to the closing phrase, you, the reader, are asked to join in the team's efforts to "Run the Risk"!!! AND, YOU DO, willingly. Run the Risk, as I take it from the book, is the term used by fire investigators when they have done all that they can in a situation, given the circumstances, their FULL professional expertise and experience, and are left with the time-sensitive need to make a decision: cut A wire; cut THE wire; cut the WIRES; cut the RED wire; cut the BLUE wire; but, still, DO SOMETHING or the bomb will go off!! I found this parable to ring true for most of all that we do in the world today, given the speed of events we are faced with, and the consequences of our decisions. AND, the need we have to ACTUALLY LIVE with the results of that decision!! I LOVED THIS BOOK!! As an "expert" in "serial killers", I found this one a new and truly horrifying one - even worse than Hannible Lecter!!! I am running to obtain the next in this series. THANK YOU SCOTT FROST!!

Run the Risk is the best mystery/adventure novel I've read. It was fine for the first two pages, captured my attention on page 3, then utterly engulfed my consciousness. Its pace was brisk by mystery standards, and it kept accelerating all the way to the end. As a mystery, the plot has twists and turns to challenge the best minds to sort out at every particular moment what has already happened and what is about to happen. Mysteries traditionally focus on a buildup to "whodunnit", and there's definitely some of that in Run the Risk. However, it really shines in its portrayal of mind games, sorting out some VERY unconventional situations about what, how, and why. Most of the book is an ongoing mental duel pitting the detectives against a masterful criminal mind. In some ways the feel is a bit like the best of season 1 of Twin Peaks. That might not be surprising given Scott Frost's earlier work on Twin Peaks... whether Twin Peaks influenced Frost or Frost influenced Twin Peaks would be an interesting question to explore. I suspect that the influence was mutual.

Just a note to correct an error. Scott Frost is the author of RUN THE RISK, of course, but Scott is NOT Mark. Mark Frost is the author of LIST OF SEVEN and THE 6 MESSIAHS, not Scott. Two different men.

Scott Frost makes his formal novel debut with a scorchingly fascinating, roller coaster ride of a story set against the background of Pasadena, California during the time in which all eyes are on the sunny and elegant vestige of yesteryear - the New Year's Day Rose Parade. Frost understands the city and its environs and even for those of us who live here, he opens vistas with his word painting that bring into focus the 'city of perpetual New Year's Day sunlight' and makes that atmosphere add to the fine story of this first novel. Frost has established writing credentials: he has been a scriptwriter for "Twin Peaks" and "Life Goes On". And perhaps that is why this particular novel feels so cinematic. Few writers can top his conversational tone, written in such distinctive voices that the out-of-quotes 'he said/she said' become obsolete. Every character in this book is so well defined that were they to pass us on the street we would gasp and think 'I know him'. Frost places the narration of RUN THE RISK in his main character Alex Delillo, a divorced/widowed mother of a teenage girl Lacy who just happens to be a Homicide detective on the Pasadena Police Force. Alex and Lacy are in the expected struggle that occurs between mother/daughter in the daughter's high school years. The tone of this story is set when Lacy, a Pasadena Rose Queen princess, jolts the proper Pasadenans by spraying pesticide on the crowd as her name is called in the crowning proceedings. This 'environmentalist' gesture sets into motion a series of incidents that begin with bombs and murders in the florist environs closely associated with the incipient Rose Parade. Lacy disappears and Alex begins her investigation of what becomes an intensive and razor-sharp search for a man thought to be a terrorist bomber bent on gaining world recognition by setting off a bomb on millions of television screens observing the famous Rose Parade. But Alex in tandem with a bomb expert Harrison slowly realize that they are not dealing with a terrorist but a serial killer. Lacy is being held hostage and the one person who can bring this all to a climax is Lacy's terrified but determined mother Alex! How all this weaves into a running series of shocking events, each surprising the reader with gory details and propelling the speed of page turning, is the structure of the novel. But in contrast to other writers of this genre, Frost has created a protagonist in Alex Delillo who holds not only our attention but our complete empathy, a character so real in her emotions that she quashes all previous perceptions of the hard woman cop. And as this weren't sufficient to place Frost in the prominent arena of fine thriller writers, he also generously displays his sensitive observations of a city and environs like few other writers. "Driving through the garment and jewelry districts of downtown L.A. is like stepping back into a fifty-year-old Kodachrome home movie of Mexico City. Garish colors of

I'm always searching for new authors and this one is a winner. Kept my interest and had a different twist from the run-of-the-mill thriller. Can't wait for more!