No Way Out By Emmanuel Olowe Book Review

Emmanuel Olowe is another of the very many emerging New York City based writers that have made their mark in the world of publishing. His first novel, entitled As Nature Blows was released in 2021 and was received with great reviews. The novel was about a forty-something year old woman that had been married for twenty-five years by the time she wrote her memoirs. Her book was not a best seller but it did become a New York Times Best Seller. This was an encouraging sign of things to come for Olowe as he began work on a second novel entitled No Way Out.

No Way Out is the follow up to As Nature Blows and was released in September of this year. This time around, Olwee has hired the services of former detective agency head Mimi Rogers to help him put together the case that is the focus of the novel. The story revolves around a pair of convenience store employees that are murdered. This leads the man in charge of the store to embark on a personal vendetta and seek revenge on the person that ordered his murder, while the police investigator tries to piece together what happened and why.

The writing in No Way Out is solid, creative and at times even darkly funny. However, what really makes the novel stand out from the rest is its strong sense of character development and how each character's circumstances are slowly revealed throughout the course of the book. It isn't just a crime thriller or a coming of age story. Olowe wanted his readers to take the book seriously and try to find out what exactly happened to the people involved. He knows that most readers won't want to do that, but he wanted to give the story a sense of mystery and how the reader would feel when they finally figured out exactly what happened.

The characterizations are deep and well done, which make you feel like you really know them. The storyline itself is captivating and kept me reading through the last couple of chapters. Olowe knows how to build excitement, how to create characters that will draw you in and how to end the suspense so that the reader doesn't lose interest. With his award winning writing skills, Olowe has created one of the best crime novels you'll ever read.

My favorite scenes are those that depict the pains and pleasures of jealousy and the triumph of friendship. Olowe manages to create tension without creating a stupid scene. He uses descriptions well and brings out the humor when necessary. This isn't your run of the mill detective story where the suspect gets discovered and the protagonist solves the crime. No way Out tells its story with a lot of twists and turns.

Olowe took a lot of effort to complete this masterpiece; taking years to research before he put his words onto paper. It is a very well written novel that doesn't sit still or run on plot. It's a novel that is very entertaining; one that I highly recommend to fellow readers because of its great plot, smart character development and Olowe's style of literary prose.