In brief: One Fat
al Mistake, by Tom Hunt is a taut thriller about a woman struggling to deal with her son’s accidental killing of a man, which he covered up, before lethal complications set in.
The story: Karen is a middle-aged nurse and divorced mom in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, whose relatively stable life is turned upside down when she discovers that her teenaged son, Joshua, has accidentally killed a man—and covered it up. In her struggle to figure out the right way to handle this problematic situation, Karen and Joshua run headfirst into a pair of desperate bank robbers, Amber and her husband, Ross, who are on the run from the law.
Without giving too much away, what evolves is a tense, edge of your seat hostage situation. Ross and Amber’s bank robbery has gone bad beyond imagination. They lost the money they stole. Amber is injured, and Ross’s brother, Shane, whom they screwed over, is coming for blood. Ross decides to take Karen and Joshua hostage so they can get medical care for Amber while he figures out a plan to escape with their lives.
One Fatal Mistake, as its title suggests, is a story about how things can spiral out of control as the consequences of one bad decision. Joshua and Karen’s lives are in danger throughout, but even if they survive, Joshua’s future is at risk. He could go to jail for his role in an innocent man’s death.
What I liked about this book: Hunt is very skilled at setting up a suspenseful scenario and keeping his foot on the gas the whole way through. The book is well written, and there’s a surprise and cliffhanger on almost every page. He also shows a talent for interweaving character arcs into the action, something that many thriller authors fail at, including some of the biggest names in the genre. You get a sense of how Joshua thinks, and it seems pretty par for the course for an 18-year-old. You feel Karen’s pain as she grapples with what seem like impossible decisions. You get into the heads of Amber and Ross in ways that you often don’t get in your average thriller.
Constructive criticism: The plot of this book felt a little contrived, but the suspense is good enough that you don’t care. There are actually two plots, each of which could support a full book, that collide early on. You get the sense that the author might have started with two separate book ideas and merged them. Or, the hostages, who were minor characters in the first draft, emerge into their own full-blown story in the later version. There are also certain sequences that seem far-fetched, such as breaking a prisoner/patient out of a hospital, but again, the writing is so good, you don’t stop and say, wait, that couldn’t really happen. You just go with it because you’re hooked.