Review of John DeDakis's Fast Track

ISBN: 159507094X

The following review was contributed by: NORM GOLDMAN: Editor of Bookpleasures. CLICK TO VIEW Norm Goldman's Reviews 

John DeDakis, who is currently a Senior Copy Editor at CNN where he supervises the writing on Daybreak, has crafted an exciting narrative with his debut novel Fast Track.

Our story begins with a cataclysmic event when our principal protagonist Lark Chadwick's aunt, Ann, unexpectedly takes her own life. Lark had been very close to her aunt after her parents were killed in a head-on collision with a train.  As a result, Lark is now determined to find out how exactly the accident occurred and why did her aunt commit suicide.

Following the shock waves of the suicide of her aunt, she accidentally meets up with Lionel Stone, a former Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times editor who has now recently become the publisher of a local newspaper. Stone hires Lark as an investigative reporter and what she discovers, after a relentless journey, was that she was in the car at the time of her parents fatal accident. Fortunately, she had been thrown to safety, thus giving her the name of “the miracle baby,” by the press.

However, Stone never realized that when he hired Lark that the subsequent story she would stumble upon was beyond his wildest imagination that would include a threat on the life of his newly hired reporter, a move to oust the local priest, the questionable and suspicious behavior of the law authorities at the time of the accident, and the exact nature of the train accident. Moreover, Lark believes that her entire life had been lived in the shadow of a lie, as she was never told the truth by her aunt and grandparents as to what exactly happened.

The novel's strength is its roller-coaster plot, where tension lies between secrets revealed and unrevealed. In fact, you can't stop reading and you don't want to stop!