Overview
Gregg Kaplan’s partner has vanished without a word.
He is inexplicably kept in the dark by his employer, the CIA, and ordered to stand down or face the consequences. Refusing to follow orders, Kaplan strikes out on his own in search of Isabella Hunt, the woman he is in love with.
Following a tip that led him across the country to a small town in Wyoming, he finds himself in trouble once again when two of the town’s bullies assault a young Native American woman. This time it lands him behind bars. Kaplan quickly learns that the men he just put in the hospital are the sons of a wealthy and politically connected land baron.
Town Marshal Christine Cavalier is stumped by recent crimes in her once peaceful town. After one of her deputies is murdered, she realizes her understaffed department cannot handle the wrath of the most powerful man in town. She is forced to turn to a man with special skills—Kaplan—who is pushed into an unwanted alliance with the marshal in exchange for what he believes the marshal knows about Isabella.
Aided by his friend, Pete Moss, and the Town Marshal, Kaplan finds himself in a deadly shoot-out. Cavalier believes the killer is dead, but Kaplan knows somebody more sinister is the mastermind behind the killing spree, but is it too late to stop him before he kills again?
With relentless pacing, striking twists, and some of most devious characters yet, LAST CHANCE is Chuck Barrett writing at his awe-inspiring best.
Awards:
Finalist in the 2019 International Book Awards Thriller/Adventure category!
Reviews:
From an Amazon reviewer:
I also loved the main character, Kaplan, as well as his good friend Pete Moss. Kaplan is a Special Forces guy who is currently “on hold” with the government, which means he has time to go out west and try to find a fellow agent and woman he was in love with, and who dropped out of his life. During his search, he gets side-tracked in a small western town. Saying anything more would ruin the story!
What I really enjoyed about these books is that for once, we don’t have the main characters walking into a trap in which the reader is silently yelling, “How can you be so stupid as to have not seen what you were walking into!” Instead we have a hero who is not only smarter than the bad guys, but such an incredible “super-hero,” (for lack of a better term), that the reader cannot help but totally admire this guy.
The plot was well-thought out and in both books there are always twists and turns which keep the reader absorbed. Real page-turners, and hard to put down! And when the stories are over the only disappointment is that there aren’t more Gregg Kaplan stories to read!
There is one small bone of contention I had with the story, however. At one point the Magistrate, Kaplan, Kaplan’s friend, and another deputy, as I recall, go out to a rancher’s home to arrest him and one of his sons. To my logical mind, knowing how evil this rancher and his sons are, and the extremely serious crimes of murder and kidnapping which they are accused of, I found it difficult to accept that any potential arrest of such bad men would occur without having a few SWAT teams and one heck of a lot more law enforcement officials on the scene. But then again, Kaplan is such an extraordinary person that I guess he really doesn’t need all that back-up!
This was a great read. I would recommend it, hands down!