Framing the Shot

Review: Decisive Moment by Eduardo Suastegui

Thus far, Suastegui's Our Cyber World series seems to divide into two sub-series: hacker-photographers and sniper-photographers. I've been enjoying the heck out of both sub-series, in large part because the paradigm of photography, framing the shot and capturing the moment, is used to good effect in setting the scenes and telling the story.

This episode brings several sharpshooter-turned-snapshotters together in a single story, with solid links to the quick eye and snap judgement that both tasks require.

Suastegui's women are of a similarly consistent kind to his heroes (in this series, at least.) They are all slightly amoral, hot, and intelligent, and are willing to be deeply involved in whatever action the guys are getting into. I really appreciate that, especially when it is obvious that the men are strongly inclined to be protective, and find it hard to accept that the gals are just as happy to pull some triggers.

I liked the protagonist of Decisive Moment, Roger Morris, much better than his brother (who doesn't deserve the help Roger keeps giving him), but not as much as Andre Esperanza, the other sniper-photographer from two previous novels, Pink Ballerina and Active Shooter. A third sniper character, Jesse, doesn't appear to have any pretension to fine art photography—but there's always a sequel!

I was able to read and enjoy this novel out of sequence again, which is one of Suastegui's strengths. Each novel stands on its own, braced in a shooting position, and ready for the decisive moment. Whether film or bullet, he always scores, so far at any rate.