Last Chance

Prepare to suspend ALL disbelief. Single parent Don Egg goes AWOL and Julian, his 15-year-old son, is left to take care of his two half-sisters on his own. Explaining away his father’s absence quicker than you could say ‘Foster Care’, he successfully shrugs off his school’s suspicions, bamboozles his nosy neighbours and fobs off his shrink – yes, shrink! If that wasn’t enough to cope with, he also has the demands of his author’s subplot thrust upon him, in which he is single-handedly expected to infiltrate and investigate a multinational toymaker whose ‘Fuzzball’ products so inexplicably mesmerize his younger sisters.

Therapist’s thesis-turned-thriller, Last Chance is a readable but uneven novel which champions a youngster who copes with life’s problems and improbabilities while failing to condemn his absent parents who cop out.