Killer Choice

The future looks bright for Gary Foster, the hero of Hunt’s engrossing, if flawed, first novel. He owns a small retail business in his hometown of River Falls, Mich., with his brother, and his wife, Beth, is pregnant with their first child. Then Gary gets a call from the local hospital, where an ambulance has taken Beth after she collapsed and went into convulsions at a shopping mall. Tests soon show that Beth has a rare form of inoperable brain cancer. The couple’s only hope for her survival is an experimental treatment that costs $200,000, which their insurance won’t cover. Gary’s life becomes a nightmare as he and Beth futilely try to raise the money. Meanwhile, a stranger approaches him with a Faustian bargain: if he murders a man, the money to save his wife is his. Hunt does a fine job of maintaining tension and dread throughout, though some thriller fans will be disappointed that the straightforward plot builds to a predictable, anticlimactic conclusion. [em]Agent: Laney Katz Becker, Massie & McQuilkin. (Jan.) [/em]