Ruth Addems is a soap opera star on the rise, but when her house in the affluent neighborhood of Black Hawk is broken into it looks as if she has a stalker and she is reffered to Rey. But Rey quickly finds out that things aren't always as they appear. In the world of Hollywood everyone has secrets and most stories are the stuff that nightmares are made of. Rey learns that once an object is in motion, it remains in motion...
An Object in Motion, Ronald S. Barrios
Novellas must present an author with a series of quite specific challenges - developing a plot, circumstances and resolution with enough development of enough character's to give the story some depth and engagement for a reader. Given that I've recently been reading quite a bit of Pulp Fiction I was really interested to see how Barrios would do this in a current day story.
And it has to be said, in an AN OBJECT IN MOTION, Barrios has pulled off all of the major requirements - with a nice touch of cynical humour that worked really well. Not that this novella reads as a direct rip off of the old Pulp format, and thankfully, there's a good female character who's not just the "blond and beautiful - dangerous and/or as thick as mud" stereotype. Most of the characters in this story have a questionable background, which means that the possible list of suspects builds and moves around as more and more is uncovered.
All in all, AN OBJECT IN MOTION is a good plot that rolls along at a good pace, with the reader given a real sense of solving the puzzle along with our central detective. Well that is until a very interesting twist at the end - that I certainly didn't see coming - but which just made a lot of sense. A definite "of course" sort of moment at the end of a very entertaining story.