A Decent Ransom - a new review February 2009

‘A Decent Ransom’ is not only a wholly well spun tale of a bungled kidnap caper which is not what it initially appears to be, but it is also an exercise in creative writing that places Hrubá in a high echelon of contemporary writers. One of the many aspects of Hrubá’s writing that marks her as an artist of note is her ability to create a varied cast of characters – from young teenagers to old men sugar daddies and used loose women, immigrants with issues particular to their backgrounds to average middle class couples in brittle relationships, older relatives with perversions, to women with neuroses/psychoses who converse with their alter egos. And in bringing such animation to vivid life, Hrubá elects to allow the reader to hear from each of these many characters, divided for convenience into individual brief chapters, in the first person singular. Rarely have characters bristled with life as vibrant as the strange folks involved in ‘A Decent Ransom’. Hrubá has a way with conversation, not only allowing the young Phoebus to speak in the innocent voice of a forgotten youth, but also in presenting the wisely phonetic mispronunciations by the German immigrants and the Chinese girls. Hrubá keeps things clipped to short chapters and offers just enough information with each character's voice to allow the reader to stay on track. After many twists and turns in the plot, brought to brilliant life by the fact that we are privy to the thoughts and vantages of each of the characters, the story winds to a surprising and satisfying climax. Grady Harp, February 2009