Slay Ride by Chris Grabenstein

Review by Gloria Feit

 

The mid-December day starts out for Scott Wilkinson, a 30-year-old MBA advertising executive from New Jersey, in not extraordinary fashion:  he must catch an early morning flight out of Newark Airport to Dallas on a routine business trip, and his limo driver, after arriving late to pick him up, drives in manic fashion in order to get him to the airport within Scott's tightly structured time schedule.  A perfectly usual thing for any young businessman in the NY Metro area to experience.  Except that this limo driver, Nikolai Kyznetsoff, against whom Scott lodges a complaint, is not at all ordinary (ex-KGB among other things), and he vows vengeance against Scott, who he feels has ruined his life – he is fired as a result of the incident.  And, to paraphrase the Hulk, you wouldn't like to make Nikolai an gry – and he is very, very angry - and he knows where Scott lives.

 

Almost precisely one year later, Scott's life intersects with that of Christopher Miller, a 50-year-old FBI legend.  Chris has a wife and a six-year-old daughter he adores, and has been on limited desk duty after a superior exacted his punishment when Scott took the spotlight away from him in a headline-making capture.  Chris has become involved in a police investigation of Russian mob activity in Brooklyn which leads back to the aforementioned Nikolai, and finds he must extricate Scott from a precarious situation, which in turn puts his own life and that of his family in danger.  The action is fast and furious, and the suspense builds to an exciting conclusion.

 

This is the start of a promising new series, with Chris Miller as the protagonist, from Mr. Grabenstein, previously the author of the much-enjoyed Tilt-A-Whirl and Mad Mouse, and in mostly the same light-hearted vein [if one doesn't count the violence and murders] as the previous novels.  Not to be taken too seriously, it's a lot of fun, with just enough suspense, and just in time for the holidays [which play an important part in the plot].