In Stephen Woodfin’s novel LAST ONE CHOSEN, the government attempts to silence a brilliant scientist when he refuses to cooperate in a plan to deploy the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. By so doing, the scientist, Joshua Issacharoff, sows the seed of his own destruction.
The book is a fast-paced legal thriller, a true page-turner from the pen of an experienced attorney. It is book one in the Revelation Effect trilogy.
However, LAST ONE CHOSEN is more than a legal thriller. It is a parable, a story in which things hidden begin to reveal themselves. There are oblique references throughout the book to THE IDIOT, Dostoevsky’s story of the one true person as he conceived such a character in Nineteenth century Russia. These hints provide a clue to the story within the story.
What if the one true person lived among us? Would we recognize him for what he was, or banish him to the death chamber? Would we listen to his kind words of love or condemn him as a traitor?
Writers have grappled with these questions for centuries. In LAST ONE CHOSEN, Stephen Woodfin tries his hand at it.
Don’t misunderstand me. This isn’t a churchy or preachy book. The characters, a couple of country lawyers who form the defense team, a gay Black preacher, a dope head whore rescued from the street, a convicted thief, a television actress, a fired Baptist minister, among others, are gritty and real.
The Tattered Bookstore in Denver was the location for a key scene in Last One Chosen. Photo: Steve Crecel at VisitDenver.
She thought of a later visit, this time on her senior trip with three of her girl friends. Nice girls all, they were hungry for a taste of something beyond Kilgore, Texas, a wild something. She had outdone them all, scaring them home afraid to tell of her exploits, her two-day disappearance that ended when three guys old enough to be her father dropped her off on the highway a mile from their rented unit, and she wobbled her way to the door sporting a new tattoo and her first STD.
Likewise, the government’s agents are mean to the bone, calculating, vicious, willing to stop at nothing to achieve their grab for world domination.
The action builds to its climax when Joshua Issacharoff stands trial. But the trial’s bizarre ending displays that justice is ephemeral, a poor substitute for redemption.
Woodfin brings back many of the characters in LAST ONE CHOSEN in book 2 of the trilogy, NEXT BEST HOPE, which will be available from Gallivant Press in early 2012.
I look forward to the sequel. If it’s as good as book one, it will be a helluva book.
Stephen Woodfin is also author of The Sickle’s Compass and Money Is Thicker Than Blood: Murder in the SEC.