Never Look Back: Ooops, I did!

It might be great advice – to follow the admonition of Ridley Pearson’s first novel, “Never Look Back.” After all, who wants to remember drivers before cell-phones, teenagers without iPods, and television without CSI?

Now that I think about it, maybe it wasn’t such a bad time.

It was back when the bad guy in a story could come from a Soviet-bloc country and readers immediately gave a shiver. Ooh. Baaaad guy. In “Never Look Back,” Pearson relies on that sentiment to give dimension to his evil-doer, but – looking back on it – the Villain comes across more like Boris Badenov in the long-gone Bullwinkle cartoon series. (Anyone remember that No Goodnik?)

The flipside is, long before terrorism became a North American threat, Ridley Pearson wrote a believable scenario in which a series of attacks knocks out communications all across Canada as part of an assassination plot. The Good against Evil plot and the resulting chase hold up nicely, and there are no head-knocking technology references that many stories of the period suffer. There are some stops at payphones, but hey! – most people still remember those.

It’s safe to assume that writers improve with experience, and Pearson has a new suspense novel out this summer, and a just released young reader suspense story. He has developed a loyal following of readers and one of his tales has made it to the movie theaters.

The mark of a good story is how well it holds up through time – and for lovers of espionage in the Robert Ludlum vein, it’s worth going against the author’s advice to “Never Look Back,” – to take in the start of an author’s successful journey.

Rest assured, there’s no Natasha and no Fearless Leader (even if there IS “bomb in squirrel’s briefcase…”), and – of course – Rocky saves the day.