Escape Clause [Hardcover]

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!!

This book takes a slight departure from the norm in the life of FDLE special agent Bill Tasker when he temporarily leaves Miami to investigate a death at Manatee Correctional near Gladesville. His boss feels he needs a break from his usual high-stress life of chasing dangerous criminals, plus an investigation at the prison will quiet any board of inquiry investigation into Tasker's last high-profile case. Tasker settles into his tiny, government-issue apartment, expecting a quiet idyll, but instead finds himself the victim of violent attacks by prison inmates, a blend of apathy and animosity from the prison staff, and a major attraction to the prison's investigator, Renee Chin. Tasker's next-door neighbor, Professor Klingman, is a likeable guy on an archaeological dig, accompanied by an attractive young female assistant, Billie Towers. Manatee Correctional is run with an iron fist by Captain Sam Norton and his portly sidekick, Sergeant Henry Janzig, who enforce discipline through unorthodox ways, and who want Bill Tasker gone as quickly as possible. Too bad the tenacious agent can't take a hint. At the same time, inmate Luther Williams a/k/a Cole Hodges, who was put away because of Tasker, has managed to gain trustee status and is hatching a few plans of his own while he keeps a spotless prison library.

Tasker suspects something more than a suspicious death at the prison is afoot when he's accosted first by an inmate in the psych ward, then former inmates at a bar, and again by a group of Aryan Knights, and when Professor Klingman is murdered, the Gladesville detective seems uninterested in doing anything to solve the crime. When Luther Williams escapes and calls Tasker with a tip while he's on the run, Tasker starts to put it all together.

Though Born's third effort is as good as his first two, it is not quite as much fun. There seem to be fewer characters and a lot less going on, though he makes good use of characters from the earlier novels in a way that ties them all together and makes me anxious to get my hands on the fourth. Born keeps his stories entertaining by changing the point of view often. Even though Luther Williams is a bad guy, I inexplicably wanted him to succeed in his escape because there's something likeable about him. Even Elmore Leonard doesn't draw his villains that well.

Jim Born is the best thing to happen to crime fiction so far in the new millennium. Anyone who loves crime novels, especially those set in Florida, should be reading him.

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.

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