March 2, 2009
At the start of Freveletti’s less than impressive debut, a British Airways flight from Miami, Fla., to Bogotá carrying 30-year-old chemist Emma Caldridge crashes in the Colombian jungle. Armed men dressed in fatigues start taking the survivors hostage, but Caldridge manages to escape into the forest. A distress call from her cellphone reaches the U.S. government, which recently sent troops to Colombia to help guard an oil pipeline, as well as Darkview, a Blackwater-like outfit assisting the U.S. military with special ops around the world. Caldridge proves amazingly successful at dodging the bad guys, and even uses her professional training to derive digitalis from a plant for a fellow passenger who’ll die without it. Cameron Sumner, a member of a drug agency who had special reasons for being on the BA flight, provides the requisite romantic interest. Some may cheer the author’s larger-than-life heroine, but the clichéd action offers nothing thriller readers haven’t encountered countless times before.