Eric Red has written some awesome movies, some of which he directed himself. His filmography includes The Hitcher, Near Dark, Body Parts, Bad Moon, and 100 Feet, among others. He has also written some really cool books in recent years, like The Guns of Santa Sangre, The Wolves of El Diablo, and White Knuckle. His latest novel is called Stopping Power, and it was just recently published by Seidelman & Company – paperback copies can be purchased at THIS LINK, and the Kindle edition can be found HERE.
With a page count of 297, Stopping Power tells the following story:
A desperate mother. Her abducted daughter. A ruthless kidnapper. An impossible ransom.
Devoted mother Stephanie Power is on a road trip in Houston, Texas with her teenage daughter, Libby. They stop at a gas station to refuel, and when Stephanie comes back from paying, she finds her daughter and their RV have suddenly vanished. Ilsa Bakke, a dangerous female bank robber on the run, just pulled an armored car heist that netted 60 million dollars in bearer bonds. She murdered her own gang, escaping in a getaway car with the Texas cops hot on her tail. She switched out her car with the mother’s at the gas station and kidnapped Libby, leaving her getaway car with the keys in it. Stephanie gets a call from Ilsa on her cell, ordering her to get into the bank robber’s getaway car and drive on the highway at high speed and keep driving or Ilsa will kill Libby – if Stephanie stops or gets caught by the cops, her daughter is dead. If she stays alive and uncaptured for one hour, Ilsa promises to release Libby safely. The desperate mother has no choice, jumping in the getaway car and leading police on a high-speed chase, the female bank robber using her as a decoy for the cops while she makes her escape in the opposite direction with Libby and the stolen loot. The game of automotive cat-and-mouse shifts into high gear as Stephanie Power drives for her daughter’s life, struggling to stay alive and elude the cops, knowing she must somehow catch up to the RV with Libby and Ilsa so she can rescue her kid and take down the real perpetrator the police are after.
Seidelman & Company publisher and editor Marco Siedelmann had this to say about the book:
There isn’t another novel this year that cuts as quickly to the chase as Stopping Power. Eric Red’s new thriller is tense, tough and tenacious. Once the story evolves from its simple but highly effective premise there’s no exit for the reader: a psychologically clever described mother-and-daughter relationship and a vicious villainess sure make for a hell of a ride – a purist genre narration encased in a very contemporary almost all-female action firework.”
This sounds like another great thriller from Red, and if you’d rather judge a book by its cover this one still seems pretty cool. I will be adding Stopping Power to my collection for sure.