"Running From the Devil" by Jamie Freveletti; Wm. Morrow (310 pages, $24.99)

Jamie Freveletti's debut takes control of a category of long neglected thrillers — the women's adventure story — and shows how to excel at these novels.

While several authors have dabbled in women's adventure tales through the years, too many have peppered their novels with unbelievable situations, stick-figure characters and, when the action waned, an overabundance of sexual situations.

Freveletti skillfully keeps "Running From the Devil" realistic and tense with believable characters worth caring about and action that never stops. Although she occasionally succumbs to cliched scenes, well, Clive Cussler does that all the time and it hasn't hurt him.

Freveletti immediately plunges her heroine Emma Caldridge into a life or death situation. Emma, a chemist for a cosmetics company, is on her way to Bogota from her Miami home when the airplane crashes in the jungle near the Venezuelan border. Emma is thrown a few feet from the crash where she watches a band of guerillas drag out the survivors, and lead them into the jungle.

Emma knows she has two choices. She can stay near the crash and risk the jungle's dangers and the terrorists returning; or follow the guerrillas, hoping she might find some semblance of civilization and help along the way. As she follows, she catches up to Cameron Sumner, a wounded government agent left to die by the guerillas. But these two are not as alone as they believe. Meanwhile, the head of a private security firm and the Department of Defense are trying to find a way to rescue the group.

An ordinary man or woman would be totally outmatched by the situation. But Emma is an ultra-endurance marathon runner, accustomed to running 100 miles at a clip, and, as a research chemist, she knows the local flora. While Freveletti gives Emma unusual skills, the author doesn't make her a superhero. Emma's intelligence, not her brawn, gives her the extra edge.

Freveletti never gives her characters — or the reader — a moment's rest. Tense action is packed into the plot from the first page to "Running From the Devil's" explosive end.

The setting is used to its fullest as the author shows us just how the jungle smells, tastes and sounds at different times. The scant South Florida scenes, however, rely on cliches and such uninspired descriptions as "Miami had a certain flair."

Freveletti, an attorney who lives in Chicago, sets high standards in "Running From the Devil," and, of course, leaves room for a sequel.