Book review: Last Straw - Ed Duncan

Title: Last Straw
Author: Ed Duncan
Genre: Thriller / Crime
Release date: November 25, 2017



It started with a run-of-the-mill carjacking.  An inner-city kid with no priors and no experience with a gun fumbled the ball, and the driver ended up dead.

A teenage girl witnessed the whole thing, and now a target has been placed on her back. The carjacker’s father, a notorious crime boss, is willing to move heaven and earth to prevent her from testifying, even if that means hiring a hitman to kill her.

Richard “Rico” Sanders, the best in the business, was his first choice for the job.  But there was a problem.  He was a “killer with a conscience” and a killer with a conscience doesn’t murder teenagers.  The crime boss reluctantly turns to someone who has no such qualms, John D’Angelo.  There was bad blood between him and Rico, so knowing that Rico had passed on the job, he eagerly accepted it.

Rico and the girls lawyer, Paul Elliott, form an uneasy alliance to try and protect her from the hitman. As the long-simmering feud between Rico and John D’Angelo reaches boiling point, bodies start to pile up in rapid succession… and old scores will be settled.



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I used to just accept book review offers without really considering the author. But I've been limiting book reviews lately to just those authors who I've already read and liked. But after reading the blurb from Ed Duncan's Last Straw, I reconsidered. So obviously, this is a first from him.

The story is promising if I actually understand what the author is getting into. In all honesty, the book was written somewhere between targeting kids with the way the story was narrated and intelligent people with the use of fancy words. I like the fact that it was written in the third person. Although I also enjoy reading single and dual POVs, third person narration has a special part in my book loving heart. But I find it challenging in the first few chapters to keep up with what scene there already is. The thriller/suspense part are good too. It makes me anxious with what will happen next. Although there are some predictable scenes/outcomes, I'm still intrigued on how it will all play out. Even if the story or the writing was not able to hold my interest for me to finish it in one sitting, it was still intriguing enough for me to actually finish it.

There were a number of major characters which is a little new to me since most novel nowadays only focuses on about 2 or 3 main characters and the rest would just be popping out here and there. Initially I found it hard to keep up with who was the characters and what scene was actually playing with the third person narration. The transition between one scene to another is not as seamless as it should be that I have to read back a few lines only to realize that they were already narrating a different scene. But given the plot line and the scenario they are in, the characters are pretty much relatable.

Overall, I'd give this a 3 out of 5 stars mainly because, despite all setbacks, it still piqued my interest enough for me to read it all thru out.