From Publishers Weekly
Kelman (Someone's Watching; Summer of Storms; etc.) saddles her protagonist, New York writer Claire Barrow, with a heap of problems in this knotty suspense thriller. Claire's police detective husband has committed suicide, leaving her to care for his rebellious teenage daughter; her money and her identity have been stolen; her mother is depressed; her beloved editor has disappeared, leaving her with a nasty new one who doesn't like her work; an old flame is becoming increasingly persistent; a street preacher rants outside her house night and day; and she's got a bad case of writer's block. Then her computer crashes and wipes out all her files. If this sounds like more than any character, real or fictional, should reasonably be expected to deal with, it is. And to top things off, the serial killer her husband fought to put behind bars, B.B. LeBeau, aka the Eel, has just been released from prison on a technicality. The Eel has somehow become the darling of an imbecilic press, and the police are inexplicably powerless to intervene as he begins hunting down everyone who had anything to do with his incarceration, including the unlucky Claire. Accompanying these woes is a gaggle of secondary characters whose primary purpose appears to be to get killed. It's almost as if Kelman feels she's lost control of her book, and thus uses Claire to voice her concerns: "A writer could get trapped in that murky twilight between her invention and herself." An implausible ending drives the last stake through the heart of an effort that fails to live up to Kelman's usual high standards.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
From the title's riff on the disturbing stalker song by the Police through the excruciating accumulation of tiny incursions that add up to identity theft, this thriller hits all the right notes. Avoiding an overly Kafkaesque tone, Kelman writes, above all, a novel of character. Author Claire Barrow is the widow of a cop, the stepmother of a problematic teen, and the "orphan" of her longtime editor, who has been ousted from the publishing house. Her new editor demands a book proposal starring a current issue, and Barrow comes up with a novel in which the heroine's life is ripped off. Then her own life begins to mirror that of her heroine's, culminating in a murder charge based on Barrow's license plate. Barrow's reactions to the theft of a life that, with her husband's death, had lost its value are intriguingly complex. Her fight for her life, on both levels, escalates the action from the computer screen to reverse tailing and beautifully choreographed climax. This thirteenth Kelman thriller is a true nail-biter. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
Claire Barrow has found a fascinating focus for her latest novel--identity theft. But her invention turns all too real as Claire begins to recognize that someone is systematically stealing her life. Her nightmare deepens with the stunning news that the courts have released the vicious killer her late husband tried to put away for life. On a collision course with total ruin and with no one left to trust, Claire sees only one--very dangerous--way out.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Every Step You Take is a masterful piece of plotting, characterization, and timing, by an award-winning crime writer who knows how to show her readers a terrifyingly good time.

For novelist Claire Barlow, life is suddenly -- and frighteningly -- as strange as her own fiction. Bullied by a new editor into writing something "hot," she decides to tackle the timely topic of identity theft. Soon the same harrowing incidents that she invented for her heroine are happening to her -- from fraudulent credit card bills to criminal accusations. She'd be more shaken by this unnerving coincidence if everything else in her life weren't also falling apart. Overnight, her teenage stepdaughter has gone from alienated and sarcastic to dangerously disturbed, and now Claire's very sanity seems is at risk.

Burdened by grief after her policeman husband committed suicide over his inability to solve a brutal mass murder, Claire found a measure of peace when the man responsible, B. B. LeBeau, was finally identified and jailed. Now that conviction has been overturned and LeBeau has become the poster boy for the wrongfully imprisoned. It's only when Claire puts the shattered pieces of this devastating plot together -- her husband's death, her stepdaughter's destructive behavior, the killer's release, and the strange way her new book has been foreshadowing the disasters in her own life -- that she's able see where this story's heading. Unfortunately, by then it may be too late! Sue Stone

FROM THE PUBLISHER

It was supposed to be a story line - just something to please her demanding new editor. But as Claire Barrow sits at her computer, outlining a plot about identity theft, fiction is becoming reality. Still beset with grief over the death of her policeman husband and struggling to raise her increasingly truculent stepdaughter, Claire must face the frightening truth that someone is appropriating her identity, piece by piece.

Then comes the shocking news that the courts have set free a vicious killer her husband had tried, unsuccessfully, to put away. With her world crumbling around her, nothing is as it seems to Claire, and she can rely only upon herself to keep from becoming the ultimate victim.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly