Lee Goldberg The Walk

The Walk

Lee Goldberg

Five Star, Jan 2004, $25.95, 225 pp.

ISBN 159414110X

TV network executive Marty Slack is on location in downtown Los Angeles when the Earthquake hits. It is the Big One and the destruction is widespread and covers an area from Santa Barbara to San Juan Capistrano. Downed electrical lines and broken gas lines turned the affected area into a raging inferno. Marty's only thought is walking the thirty miles to his wife and home to the gated community of Oakridge Hills Estates in Calabasas.

He puts together a survival kit and starts walking with his eyes down so he doesn't have to see the devastation or the people he can't help. He runs into Buck, a big tough bounty hunter, who joins his trek. Marty, who doesn't want to be a hero, saves a kid trapped in a car that might fall off the bridge. He gives comfort to a dying woman and takes the picture she gives him of her little girl and asks him to pick up at the Pre School. After surviving a tidal wave from a broken dam, he picks up little Clara risking his own life to save her from an escaped tiger. After all Buck and Marty's pain and suffering, security at the latter's community refuses to let them enter.

THE WALK is an exciting action packed thriller that would make a fantastic movie because it focuses on the protagonist who undergoes a metamorphosis from an uncaring selfish man to a heroic figure. The trials and tribulations he undergoes allows the real Marty Slack to shine as he proves he is no slacker. Lee Goldberg always entertains his audience with a gripping drama and THE WALK is certainly that.

Harriet Klausner