Running Dark by Jamie Freveletti

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Synopsis:

“From internationally bestselling author Jamie Freveletti comes a riveting new thriller featuring brilliant biochemist Emma Caldridge, except this time there’s nowhere to run. . . .

Emma Caldridge is on mile thirty-six of the fifty-five-mile Comrades ultramarathon in South Africa when a roadside car bomb explodes. Dazed and disoriented, she regains consciousness after the blast to find a man standing over her with a white plastic injector. She feels the prick of a needle and the rush of medication under her skin, but before she can make a sound, the man is gone.

Shaken by the event and unsure of what substance was pumped into her, Emma calls the one person who can help her figure things out: Edward Banner of the security company Darkview. But Banner has his hands full with another emergency: Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden have attacked a cruise ship, and Darkview has been hired to assist with the rescue.”

My take,

The book starts off with a “bang” with the roadside bomb that throws Emma Caldridge to the ground and she is approached and stuck with an object that looks like an epi-pen. She is able to get herself to her feet and is compelled to finish the race at breakneck speeds considering the injuries she sustained in the blast. She is very concerned with what might have been injected into her at the bombing site and proceeds to do testing to diagnose the substance. While this is going on Cameron Sumner (a coworker) is on a cruise ship in the Gulf of Aden and pirates proceed to overtake the ship and Cameron is forced to expose his identity to help protect the cruise ship and its occupants from the pirates.

Edward Banner is the head of Darkview which is a security company that was hired to protect areas of the Gulf of Aden and convinces Emma Caldridge to sneak onto the cruise ship and help Cameron Sumner. Emma’s main objective is to determine what the cargo is and how dangerous it may be to the world.

I won this book in the Librarything.com Early Reviewers Giveaway. This is the first book by Jamie Freveletti that I’ve read. I had heard great things about her first book “Running with the Devil” but did not have the opportunity to read it. As I read “Running Dark” there were some areas that probably would have been better understood had I read her first book. There were also times while reading Running Dark that things seem to be cut short or left hanging or unfinished. I hope that some day I will have the opportunity to read her first book and then read Running Dark and maybe things will come to light.