Double Take is the first foray into crime fiction for Australian author Kendall Talbot. I didn’t do much reading up about the book before I started, so though I knew it was about a bank heist, I was unaware that it was inspired by an actual robbery. It is set in a branch where a young Kendall Talbot once worked.
The robbery that actually went down was intricately planned, as was the one in Double Take, but that and the branch are the only real similarities.
Talbot asks the age old questions of whether crime really does pay and how far would you go for the one you love. Would you commit a felony for the one you love? But the big question that stuck in my mind was just how far would you go to make good on a promise you made as a thankful teenager.
Double Take is as entertaining as it is intriguing and once I picked it up I had trouble having to put it down.
Jackson Rich has his own business supplying businesses with potted plants for their workplaces. It’s not a lot but it’s all he’s got, he lost his previous job, sold the house and the cars and now he may be just lose his wife as well.
If you find the love of your life and there is a chance you can buy her a reprieve from her terminal illness would you stop at nothing to get the cash for the life saving operation? Jackson Rich is willing to risk it all to save the life of his love but he has it perfectly planned.
Talbot has created characters with depth, characters that make you feel for them and then there are characters that just rubbed me wrong from their very first appearance.
The motivations took a bit to get my head around. I can understand Jackson’s motives, he was getting desperate and out of options. The old gang all have a promise to keep, but that promise was made as teenagers, and now they are well past that and have moved on from their teenage mistakes; they have built lives for themselves that will be jeopardised if anything goes wrong.
I could understand it a little more if the gang had stayed together through the years, or at least stayed in touch, but it seems that apart from Jackson’s brother they haven’t seen each other since the promise was made.
Double Take isn’t all tension and suspense, there are some laugh out loud moments and some characters that I just wanted to slap.
There are multiple simultaneous storylines so there has to be multiple view points though none of them are in the first person. We follow Jackson as he brings the gang together and lays his plans out for them; we follow the two boys in the wrong place at the right time and we follow the bored gold digger trying to find herself some security and then later on we also keep up with police officer Montgomery Steel.
Double Take spans more than a decade to ensure we follow the story from start to finish and it was certainly pitted with twists I hadn’t seen coming.
This book is a must-read for lovers of Australian fiction, it has an undeniable Aussie feel to it that I can’t really explain.
The pacing was good with action right the way through, leaving you always wondering, and for every question answered, another arose.
The gang Jackson brought together was his brother Jimmy, Rachel, Donny, Stubbs and Pete. We learn a bit about Jimmy and Rachel, gaining an understanding of why they got involved and also of their personalities. That wasn’t the case with the others. Donny and Stubbs were part of the old gang from high school and they made a promise but we don’t really learn much more than that. Pete is even more enigmatic. They are only secondary characters and not knowing them doesn’t affect the enjoyment of the story but for my own satisfaction, I would have liked to know them better.
Double Take is a gripping read that will satisfy readers of many genres, this is definitely a crime novel and it is a well written crime novel but it is also about the people and the relationships outside of that.
I devour books, vampires and supernatural creatures are my genre of choice but over the past couple of years, I have broadened my horizons considerably. In a nutshell – I love to write! I love interacting with a diverse range of artists to bring you interviews. Perhaps we were perfect before – I LOVE WORDS!
I decided to give my Stepson a 21st Birthday party to finally win Favoritism with him & my Husbands Family. I invited my Husbands ex Wife so that everyone would see her true destructive, lying & outright hatred she really had against them all. To also show her & my Stepson’s devious, disgusting, manipulative & ongoing joint plan to break up my Husband & my Marriage. Instead she was on her best behavior & so was her Son. She took over the whole Party & my house to the point that all that were there completely cut me out so badly that I ended up getting in my car & drove a few km, away & sat by myself, not returning until the whole thing was finished & everyone had left. What was worse,no one apart from my Husband & Daughter even realised I was not there.
I had planned a huge 50th suprise birthday party for my husband everything was planned and booked sent out all the invitations to his family and friends I was so disappointed when sorry we can’t make it cards started arriving the excuse being we lived in Sydney and all his family lived in far North Queensland so to far to travel needless to say cancelled all my plans and just took him out for dinner to our favourite restaurant just so glad I had never told him about the party I was so disappointed
Don’t think anything I could come up with could top this!
For my engagement party, my parents wanted to have fresh cooked prawns on ice as a part of the dinner meals they had on offer. Dad was going to get up early and get the prawns for that night but lovely brother offered that he would be out at a an all night party that was near the seafood markets plus he knew the guy that had fresh prawns and he could get a good price.
He arrived home and placed the wrapped up prawns in the fridge…….just before lunchtime my dad decided to try one prawn and nearly choked when he saw raw prawns. Panic stations set in, brother was jolted out of bed, phones were ringing back and forth. Thankfully, the guy still had some fresh prawns and brother had to go back and get the correct ones.
The guests were arriving around 5pm so it was a rush for brother to get to the markets and back home again so parents could prepare some of the prawns.
It was lovely that dad did a speech and thanked his son for buying the prawns. To this day, he will never forget it……we make sure of that. 🙂
My big job interview was coming up. I wanted to look my best, present myself at my best, feel my best . So, I did the whole shebang – hair, nails, facial, outfit you name it. I was ready. I even watched my diet.
To this day I blame the fresh pineapple. (I did eat a lot of it.)
I turned up for my interview. They had the heat up. It brought out my hives. I spotted up beautifully right before their eyes.
You would have thought that I had bubonic plague. Not even a sympathy vote.
I can laugh about it now.
Back in the 1970’s, my boyfriend and I went camping over the New Year break. My Dad was dead against it, as we weren’t married, and “suggested” I wasn’t allowed to go, and “suggested” I didn’t return home afterwards if I went. Being defiant, I went. Because of the bad weather we were almost blown off the planet, our camping gear, food, and tent were saturated, Anyway, I had my trip away, and returned home to weeks and weeks of total silence! And they call them “the good old days”. lol. Anyway, I have now been married for nearly 40 years to this “boyfriend”!
2013 & friends had been begging us to go on holiday with them but we said we couldn’t go a few weeks later we thought we would surprise them & booked to meet them in Hawaii they didn’t have any idea.Well as the holiday got closer & they still had no idea when suddenly the husband of said friend had a mild heart attack & we thought they have to cancel & we would be in Hawaii alone.Luckily he soon got the all clear & we waved them off but caught the plane the next day roll up to their hotel for the big surprise but the security at the hotel would not let us up for the surprise so we waited downstairs for them to appear & wow was it a big surprise & we had the best holiday together.
A romantic dinner plan for Valentines day. Making this brief, was running out of time, the house a mess, still had to get the meal. Asked a friend over to side-track my partner should he arrive home, went to get dinner, got a speeding fine on the way back, tipped the dinner onto the driveway when I rushed from the car. Got in, dressed to impress and then he was late, unimpressed and exhausted. So much for romance!
Friends birthday purchased shoes, scoring designer pair myself. To my horror, she opens box…accidentally gave her Prada’s. No heart to take away her excitement.
I decided to get my father and sister together for a nice friendly lunch .they haven’t spoken in years tried help it along but it went horribly wrong ended up in huge fight ,
We went to a special birthday at a farm and camped in tents for 2 nights. We put the tent up in what is normally the most sheltered side of the farm house. Just after daylight gale force winds blew through like a mini tornado and the tents blew down on top of us. We crawled out, dismantled the tent completely, anchored it down with spare bricks and went inside and had an early breakfast which had supposed to have been outside with our breakfast cooked over a fire pit. The winds eased we folded up our tent and we had planned to stay until mid afternoon. Heavy rain forced us to leave early in case the dirt road was flooded and to avoid getting bogged. With more gale winds came the hugest display of lightning I have ever witnessed.