Review: The Light Touch for a Story
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 13, 2014
Adam Light's Taken is a throwback to the Alfred Hitchcock Presents style of short story suspense: a quick read that builds on a bizarre premise to an enjoyable twist ending. In less than 30 pages, Light manages to turn the reader's expectations around a couple of different times, leading to an ending that is far from what the reader originally envisioned.Jack Harden, a long haul truck driver, returns home from dropping off his latest load with an unwilling new passenger, the waitress from a truck stop who has been kidnapped by Jack. The waitress is actually a gift for Jack's wife, Dianne, a dominating woman Jack calls his Goddess. Dianne is upset that Jack may have tried to cheat at her on an earlier run and demands he show his loyalty by bringing home a trophy.The actual kidnapping goes fairly smoothly even though Jack doesn't have much experience at this sort of thing. However, once Jack manages to brings the waitress home to Dianne, the pace picks up and the story gets much more interesting. It's hard to say much more without giving away one or more of the plot turns, but suffice it to say, the relationship between Jack and his wife causes this story to take an even more bizarre turn.Adam Light's writing style is fairly low key, which serves this story well. The story is told from Jack's point of view, but Light avoids turning him into an over-the-top unhinged lunatic, just a guy trying to make his wife happy. Once Jack has kidnapped the waitress, the story moves fairly quickly to the final confrontation when Jack gets her back home. Light does manage to thrown in a few clever descriptive phrases along the way, although the dialogue between Jack and the waitress is clunky in a couple of spots.A short while ago, I had the opportunity to read a story by Evans Light, the brother of Adam Light. Apparently the two brothers work closely on their stories, each serving as the other's editor. Now that I've had a chance to read one of Adam's stories as well, I can safely say that these two writers definitely have the "Light touch" for writing the short suspense story.