Suspense/Thriller

Lots of thrillers share the trait this book has of one horrible event cascading into another, but Abbott is able to populate his novel with a group of memorable characters, though some of them are standard Mob cliches and there's even a hardcore sidekick named Gooch for Whit, lots of the characters are more interesting than that. And it's here Abbott lets his cozy roots show. Cozy writers are wonderful at sketching full characters and giving you their motives and feelings - and that's just what Abbott has done here. With a rich canvas to work with - what could be more moving than a mother and son reuniting after 30 years? - he gives himself free rein to explore the feelings of many of the characters in this novel, but most notably those of Eve/Ellen who is a truly interesting woman. I doubt many readers would identify with her - who could identify with a woman abandoning six children and never looking back? - but Abbott makes the choices she's made seem like understandable, viable ones. To me, that was the interesting journey of this novel, a novel that's almost too full of violent twists and turns, loyalty changes, and people doing things they never thought they would. Along the way Abbott also paints a very vivid - and not totally flattering - picture of modern day Houston. The sidebar characters of Frank Polo, Claudia Salazar, and Tasha the stripper are almost as interesting as Eve and Whit himself, a man who is so driven to be with his mother he'll do almost anything to get her. Of course in the end, nothing turns out as he expects it will - and that seems like the most lifelike thing of all in this long and enjoyable novel. If you have a marathon plane ride coming up in the near future, Cut and Run would be an excellent choice for your trip.