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Book Review By David Fletcher
Free Fall by Kyle Mills

Suspended FBI agent Mark Beamon is hunting for the killer of Tristan Newberry, a recent government hire working in an obscure Dept. of Agriculture archival warehouse sorting declassified documents. The authorities say the murderer is Darby Moore, a twenty seven-year old world-class rock climber who was Newberry's best friend and it was she that hacked him to death with an ice axe. Beamon working outside his normal capacity with the Bureau is being paid $300,000 to locate her for an anonymous party. The money will be needed to pay for his defense against charges that threaten to put him in prison. His search is taking him from Washington, DC to rural Maryland, West Virginia, Wyoming, and to Bangkok, Thailand.

Beamon is uneasy about the fact third party Presidential candidate David Hallorin, a Senator from Maine, keeps popping up in his investigation. Equally unsettling is his meeting with Roland Peck, a quirky, young red headed associate who runs Hallorin's business empire. And who hired rival rock climber Vili Marcek to find Darby? Someone wants her found more than this crime would warrant and Beamon's gut instinct tells him that he's being played. The only person he can trust is his good friend and former Bureau “big wig” Tom Sherman.

Hallorin is able to move up in the polls to almost even with Republican candidate Senator Robert Taylor just days before the election. Darby managed to leave the country but Beamon finds her in a fetid Thai jail cell contemplating suicide. He learns that Newberry stole a file from the archives that may have cost him his life and it now appears to be the motivation for the killing of people close to Darby as only she knows where the file is now hidden. Beamon and Darby must trek through snowy conditions in Wyoming to retrieve this dangerous file before they can return to Washington to try to find the answer as to who is behind the killings.


Plot & Themes
Tone of story - suspenseful (sophisticated fear)
Time/era of story:
Kind of investigator
Any non-mystery subplot?
descript. of violence and chases - 30 %
Planning/preparing, gather info, debate puzzles/motives - 30 %
Feelings, relationships, character bio/development - 20 %
How society works & physical descript. (people, objects, places) - 20 %
Crime Thriller Yes
Murder Mystery (killer unknown) Yes

Main Character
Gender - Male
Profession/status:
Age: - 40's-50's
Ethnicity/Race

Main Adversary
Identity: - an organization
Eccentric: Yes
Motive of antagonist - power
The antagonists are: - evil politicians
How sensitive is this character?
Intelligence - Smarter than most other characters

Setting
City? Yes
City: - Washington D.C.
Misc setting - prison

Writing Style
Accounts of torture and death? - very gorey references to deaths/dead bodies and torture
Explicit sex in book? Yes
What kind of sex: - vague references
Unusual forms of death - perforation--swords/knives - exploded into bits
Unusual form of death? Yes
Amount of dialog - roughly even amounts of descript and dialog
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