I really enjoyed my reading of Running Duck by Paula Gosling. This is an older crime story that won the John Creasey Award for the best first novel in 1974 and makes an appearance on the CWA 100 Best Crime Novels list . A young woman ad executive called Claire Randall happens to get face to face with a professional killer and could be in a position to identify him. His response is to come after her and remove that possibility. After two attempts that go wrong, the police put the pieces together and realize she needs immediate protection. Ex-army sniper, Detective Mike Malcheck is assigned to the case and he quickly realizes that this international assassin is getting information from someone connected to the police. He and Claire take to the road in an attempt to draw the murderer out.

Running Duck was an exciting and fast paced story that gives the reader a “love on the run” story line that has moments of humor along with plenty of excitement as the two snipers take turns playing “cat and mouse” with each other. The various settings send the reader on a mini-trip of California, from the Sierra Nevada mountains to the Redwood forests and visiting all these familiar places made the book even more fun for me. Unfortunately a rather cheesy film called “Cobra” is supposedly based on this book, although they have completely different plots. The film stars Sylvester Stallone which guarantees that I will never watch it, but this debut novel is well worth the read. ( )

When I read this book many years ago I thought it was brilliant. It made me go out and look for all her other books. Some got close but none quite surpassed it.

Please don't be put off by the mediocre Stallone movie! ( )

I first read this story in it's condensed version in my mother's Good Housekeeping magazine. At the time, I thought it was "on-the-edge of your seat" exciting and thought it definitely should be made into a movie. Imagine my disappointment when first, Sylvester Stallone's "Cobra" is supposed to be based on the book. You can barely spot the resemblance. *rolleyes* And then, I got excited when I heard they were "really" making it into a movie of the same title. Yet another disappointment when it was announced that William Baldwin and Cindy Crawford (in her acting debut, mind you) would play the main characters. Plus, they made it rated R. This renewed my interest in the story, however, and I went in search of the now out-of-print book. Sadly, it didn't live up to my original review of it. It still is an exciting story but I could do without the sex (that was edited out of the condensed edition) and bad language. The plot of the story is a young woman that witnesses something she doesn't know she witnessed - if that makes sense - and therefore the antagonist goes after her. She is protected by a detective that has Vietnam War issues - sometimes getting in the way of his ability to protect. I enjoyed the suspense and it really is basically a good adventure. I definitely prefer the condensed version more. ( )