Thin Luck

by Cori Lynn Arnold

Robyn Hughes, a once decorated local news reporter in Hartford, Connecticut, is released from prison only to find out her husband has skipped town with her son, and that their house has been deserted, just after breaking into it. She sets out to track down her husband in San Francisco by stealing an SUV in Connecticut, getting into a high speed chase in Upstate New York, shooting a man and leaving him for dead in Ohio. What follows is a cross-country thrill ride of a noir, where the femme fatale is out to find her man.

326 pages, Paperback

First published September 13, 2015

About the author

Cori Lynn Arnold has worked as a hotel housekeeper, handy woman, laundry attendant, radio disc jockey, library clerk, historical photographic archivist, mathematics tutor, teaching assistant, art work framer, photo lab junky, portrait and wedding photographer, high school algebra teacher, internet security researcher, security analyst, computer programmer and ethical hacker. She currently resides in Connecticut and can be found roaming from coffee shops to book stores wearing the same cheap brown 'good luck' sweater ripping apart at the seams.

Reviews

[Babus Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robyn Hughes is being released from prison, but no one appears to pick her up, so she makes her own way to her old address to find her husband and child gone. With no money and in desperate need to see her son, Robyn improvises by falling back on her old journalistic skills to track down her errant husband, as she does so we learn more about Robyn and her strained relationships with her family and friends.

With a huge amount of luck and sheer determination Robyn goes on the run meeting various colourful characters along the way. The pace of this gripping thriller is electrifying and you cannot help but be drawn into Robyn's world and her story. This is a very hard book to put down once you start reading it. The more I found out about Robyn's past, the more I wanted to know. Is she a victim of circumstances or the architect of her own misfortune?

Despite how quickly the pace moves in this thriller, you definitely get good characterisation to sink your teeth into. I found the third party perspective of what the detectives trying to find Robyn, a bit slow and arduous but I can see why they were important in putting Robyn's action into the wider world of the novel. Definitely a must-read suspense novel.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

All in all a good book, fast paced and interesting to pass the time with. I couldn't say it's one of those that touches the soul but a fun read over all.

[A.K. D'Onofrio · Rating 4 out of 5]

From page one, I wanted to know what was going on: who Robyn was, why she'd been in prison. Cori Lynn Arnold has a deft hand for suspense, stringing it taut between chapters like a violin. Robyn's cross-country quest to find Nick and Kyle is reminiscent of The Fugitive. I would say that it would make for an amazing mini-series adaptation, but it doesn't need one: Arnold's descriptions are at once rich and succinct, putting you in the scene without slowing down the story. Readers careen along with Robyn from one chance encounter to the next, and every stranger she meets is as richly detailed as our heroine. Things connect and branch off each other in unexpected, delightful ways, and culminate in a California showdown which left me holding my breath with every page turn.

My only thing which took me a little out of the read was the fact that Arnold switches from Robyn's first-person voice to third-person during the scenes with Detective Turner ... but it grew on me as the novel progressed. Hearing Robyn's tale in her voice not only makes it easier to see inside her mind, but helps wrap the reader up in it all and forget that outside of everything that Robyn is dealing with, life rolls on. When Detective Turner comes on the scene, only then do we catch glimpses of the ripples the plot is making in the "real" world, and asked to decide if we really do want to root for Robyn.

The little details really help this book shine: each chapter begins with Robyn's location, and the codes for whatever law she breaks in that location, leaving us to guess how it's actually going to happen. All in all, this was a fantastic novel: I read it in a little over a day, and after skimming through it to find the high points for this review, found myself wanting to read it again. Those who prefer e-books will find Chapter 18 worth the price, alone, but I expect that I'll be purchasing a printed copy for my shelf at some point in the future.

[Rob Forteath · Rating 4 out of 5]

Our heroine is plunged into a desperate "good fugitive on the run" storyline almost the moment we open this book. She narrowly escapes, runs, narrowly escapes again, at a hectic pace. The reader is unlikely to be in much doubt as to whether or not she will escape -- since Robyn's backstory consists of only what we need to know about her motivation for crossing the USA, we strongly suspect she will reach her destination. Indeed the author clearly gets in the way of the authorities on a couple of occasions in order to keep Robyn on the loose. Robyn squeezes through windows, steals money, steals vehicles, all with a nonchalance one would expect from a character in Grand Theft Auto.

Somewhere in the middle of the book, the reader may notice that the real story of the cross-country journey is not Robyn's long list of crimes, hardships, and escapes -- rather it is about the people she interacts with on the way. They are a bizarre and extreme bunch. If this is a representative sample of the inhabitants of "flyover states", then we are all well-advised to continue flying over them. But they do make for an interesting story, and have something to say about society. I don't want to give too much away, so I'll just suggest that you read it and see what I mean.