Intent to Kill by James Grippando, a Mysterious Review.

Review: A minor league baseball player who lost his wife in a hit-and-run is later told "it wasn't an accident" in James Grippando's sensational thriller, Intent to Kill.

Ryan James was an up-and-coming star, a player with the Pawtucket Red Sox destined to play for Boston. His future was dealt a sudden blow when his wife, Chelsea, was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Their daughter, seated in back, was spared. On the third anniversary of her death, Ryan receives a note saying his wife's death was anything but accidental. Boston prosecutor Emma Carlisle receives an identical message. Why, after three years, would someone want to reopen this case? Soon thereafter Ryan's brother-in-law, a man with Asperger's Syndrome, disappears. Was he somehow connected with his sister's death? Ryan and Emma team up and are led to a Russian hit man and a treasured baseball bat, two of the more unusual aspects of this case.

Intent to Kill is an exceptionally well-crafted thriller, the characters an integral part of what makes it successful. The despair Ryan feels over his wife's death, his unwillingness to accept it yet his eagerness to find some meaning behind it, even at risk to his own life, is strongly conveyed in the narrative. Emma has reasons of her own that draw her to the case, an unsolved crime that she's eager to prosecute and close. Possibly best of all here, though plot twists are expected, even anticipated, in a thriller, the conclusion of Intent to Kill lays out a revelation that will take even the most jaded reader completely by surprise.

Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of Intent to Kill.

Acknowledgment: HarperCollins provided an ARC of Intent to Kill for this review.

Born to Run
HarperCollins (Hardcover), December 2008
ISBN-13: 9780061556111; ISBN-10: 0061556114

Money To Burn
Harper (Hardcover), February 2010
ISBN-13: 9780061556302; ISBN-10: 0061556300