Alex Kava's first free-standing suspense novel freely adapts from the author's personal experience, adding on elements of the Charles Starkweather murder spree, to create a story of violence and confusion on a sprawl across Nebraska that harkens back to the bleak despair of Terrence Malick's "Badlands" and Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska."

Jared Barnett, freed from Death Row by a crooked lawyer and a coerced testimony, teams with his sister, a small-time con woman, and her son, a professional shoplifter. They arrange to rob a bank to pay off Jared's debts, but when shots are fired and four people are left for dead, they sprint for the country. Crime novelist Andrew Kane has isolated himself at Platte River State Park, trying to kick-start his newest novel, but his isolation turns on him when the three killers stumble on his nest and take him hostage.

Platte River State Park is real, as is the Nebraska Bank of Commerce branch the killers mishandle, and the towns of Auburn and Hastings, where key moments of the plot take place. It's disconcerting to think that I may have slept in the cabin where Andrew Kane was taken hostage. The novel clips along at a short pace, with scenes so cinematic that I can almost see the blackouts and the camera pulling focus. By releasing hints of the characters' past in measured amounts and making us wonder where their loyalties lie, Alex Kava keeps the pages turning to the end.

There's nothing really new or revolutionary in this novel. It's probably not a classic of the genre. But it is well-paced, intriguing, peopled with interesting characters, and a cracking good read. Good airport reading or something to keep in your desk for your coffee breaks, this novel is a worthwhile investment for fans of suspense fiction.

Kava has written a novel with a pretty evil main villain, Jared who was let off on a technicality from death row. He is accompanied by some limited intelligence followers being his sister Melanie and nephew Charlie who after a bungled bank robbery flee across the middle states of America. Successful author with a serious injury to his collar bone, Andrew Kane is taken hostage by the bumbling trio and Melanie soon realises nothing will stop the bloodthirsty rampage of her brother. Even worse he son seems to be following in his footsteps.

Nothing spectacular happens in One False Move, what inside has been done quite regularly before and the ending is extremely predictable but if you get this book for a really cheap price in a second hand bookstore or for free from the library it will pass the time.

While starting out as a cheap mystery, this book grows on you as it goes along, building to a real page turner with cliffhangers in nearly every short chapter. While I like more complete novels with finely crafted sentences and long descriptive terms about the setting or history of an area, this novel (without those qualities) is a decent selection for "Nebraska Reads" as our novel to read and discuss during 2006. Alex Kava is an Omaha author and it was interesting reading a book set in the area in which I live. Definitely worth reading!

This is the first Alex Kava novel I've read. A friend loaned it to me. I don't know that I'll ever read another. The story was okay, but I didn't care one iota about any of the characters. There was no suspense. The reader knows exactly what is going on the whole time and since very little background was given, there was little connection to anyone. One review mentioned that two surprising things happened at the very end of the book. Well, that's true, I suppose. But after completing the book, I was left feeling, "so what?"

I have to say that I enjoyed all the dialogue. I don't get off on books that spend pages and pages on descriptions and inner-voice stuff. So in that regard, the storytelling was good. I just didn't care about anyone in it.

Although it did feature two unexpected developments in the final pages, that does not overcome the predictable nature of most of the book. Unless the author was writting as a paradoy, she went too far in her foreshadowing. The ending was very sudden, and I think it lost a great deal of its possible impact by placing the only two surprises in such a short span of pages. This is not one of the better novels I have read recently.