It’s a general, but not inflexible, rule of mine not to read action novels written by women, even if the hero is a male. Somehow I made the choice to download Run For Your Life, by C. M. Sutter, who turns out to be a female writer (the fact that the book was free probably had something to do with this). As is often the case with woman writers, Sutter doesn’t really get male characters right. For one thing they’re too verbal here, gabbing about relationships rather than ball games or weather. And our hero kisses his pet dog on the head. Has any straight guy ever done this? But that weakness ended up not being my biggest complaint.

Mitch Cannon is a Savannah, Georgia police detective. He’s obsessive about his work, and doesn’t date much. But he recently met a woman who’s attractive and just a little crazy, and he’s looking forward to her invitation to participate in some kind of secret “raffle” for the benefit of police.

Then Mitch’s sister is kidnapped, and he has to change his plans. His partner Devon agrees to fill in for him at the raffle. Mitch is nearly insane with fear for his sister’s safety, and it gets worse when Devon and his girlfriend also fail to appear the following day.

And the whole thing ambles along to the showdown and ultimate revelations. I figured out the big final twist quite early on, and other aspects of the story disappointed me too. The dialogue was clunky and unnatural in many spots. At one point Mitch briefs his superiors on events we readers have just observed, and the author rehashes his briefing. This could have been covered by just having him say, “I told them about what I’d been doing.” Less boredom for the reader.

Another annoying element was that almost nobody in this book is described in any way, except to say how attractive one girl is, and that Devon is a little overweight.

There were also fact and logic problems. One character runs from captivity after being restrained in a kneeling position for more than a day. Would a person even be able to walk without a recovery period, after that much cramped immobility? And somebody says that nobody spends just two years in jail for murder – what country are they living in?

I must mention, in the author’s defense, though, that she has her characters pray quite often. I appreciated that.

But overall I wasn’t much impressed with Run For Your Life.