Charles ‘Shake’ Bouchon is a wheelman who just got out of jail. Now in his forties, Shake is feeling the weight of a lifetime of bad choices, and he dCharles ‘Shake’ Bouchon is a wheelman who just got out of jail. Now in his forties, Shake is feeling the weight of a lifetime of bad choices, and he dreams of going straight and opening a restaurant. However, he can’t bring himself to turn down the offer from his old boss and former lover Alexandra, who now runs the Armenian mob in Los Angeles. Shake is supposed to drive a car to Vegas, deliver it to a man who will give him a briefcase in return, and then Shake flies back to LA and gives the case to Alexandra.
It seems like a simple job, but when he gets a flat tire, Shake discovers that there’s a woman named Gina in the trunk of the car. She tells Shake that she’s just a housewife whose husband had gambling debts who ran off, and now Shake has the bad feeling that he’s delivering her to be a hostage who probably won’t get out of the situation alive. Sympathy gets the better of Shake, and he doesn’t hand Gina over and instead they make off with the briefcase. Now he’s double-crossed the leader of the Armenian mob on the West Coast, and angered the most dangerous man in Las Vegas. The only thing they have for leverage is the case which is filled with something very weird and very valuable.
If you read that plot set-up, and said to yourself, “Hey, that sounds an awful lot like the Jason Statham action movie The Transporter, you’d be right. In fact, that’s what I thought, and I had a brief moment of disappointment that Lou Berney, a writer I like quite a bit, would borrow a plot like that.
However, I should have had more faith. What Berney did is to use that feeling of familiarity to set the reader up so that you’d feel like you’d know where it’s all going, but then he veers sharply in a new direction. It’s a switcheroo that works well because when the twists and turns start coming, I was blindsided in the best way.
It’s an extremely brisk crime novel filled with vivid characters and a lot of humor. It reminded me of the late, great Elmore Leonard in all the right ways while still having it’s own unique vibe. It also moves along briskly without a wasted page and wraps up in less than 300 pages.
With every Lou Berney novel I read, I wish I’d started reading him sooner....more
If you want to know where the bodies are buried in a small town, ask the local undertaker. You can take that literally or figuratively.
Nathan WaymakerIf you want to know where the bodies are buried in a small town, ask the local undertaker. You can take that literally or figuratively.
Nathan Waymaker is a former Marine, an ex-cop, and he currently lives and works at the funeral home owned by his cousin. Despite being a generally good guy he also has a temper that would make the Hulk nervous, and his anger problems weren’t helped by the corrupt sheriff’s department he used to work for letting the man who killed his parents go free. When the leader of a local church was shot to death it seems like the cops may be tanking the case so some of the parishioners ask Nathan to check up on the police. Soon Nathan finds himself on the bad side of the cops as well as a dangerous gangster, but on the good side of the church leader’s estranged daughter who is a gorgeous porn star.
You win some, you lose some…
SA Cosby is another author I learned about at last year’s Bouchercon. He caught my attention with his reading of a short story at the Noir-At-The-Bar event. Then he impressed me even more with his participation on a panel about modern noir, and he was in the audience of other panels where he asked great questions so I made a point out of meeting him at one of the signings. Every time I was around him it was obvious that not only was he a dedicated and intelligent fan of crime fiction, but that he was living his dream by being there as an author and loving every second of it. His enthusiasm was contagious, and I’d say he deserved a MVP award for the conference as well as the Anthony Award he won for best short story.
As for the book, it’s gritty, violent, funny, and almost as entertaining as its author. It follows some of the tropes of crime fiction with a well-intentioned detective of sorts taking what seems like a simple job and getting in over his heard. There’s even the obligatory bad ass friend in the form of Nathan’s buddy Skunk. If a good friend helps you move, and a great friend helps you move a body, then Skunk qualifies as a great friend. There’s also some humor along with it that reminded me of how Joe Lansdale mixes violence, profanity, depth, and laughs. Some angles of the story also reminded of Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series.
Yet Cosby has his own voice that firmly establishes the small town Virginia setting, and then he built an intriguing lead character to guide us through it. Nathan’s history as the biracial son of a white man dedicated to a life of peaceful non-violence and a more pragmatic black woman makes him conflicted in that he feels like he’s constantly failing his late father in some ways. Yet deep down he’s just not the kind of guy who thinks that turning the other cheek is the correct response to a cruel and unfair world.
While Cosby’s personality may have sold me on reading this book, his writing is what will get me to buy his next one....more
Georgina Shaw, Angela Wong, and Kaiser Brody were best friends as teenagers in the ‘90s . Then Angela vanished without a trace. Years later Geo is a rGeorgina Shaw, Angela Wong, and Kaiser Brody were best friends as teenagers in the ‘90s . Then Angela vanished without a trace. Years later Geo is a rising executive engaged to be married to a wealthy man, and Kaiser is a homicide detective. When Angela’s body is discovered the police find evidence proving that Geo’s old boyfriend, Calvin James, killed her. Worse yet, Geo knew that he’d done it yet never turned him in for it, and he’d gone on to murder several other women after that. Kaiser is the one who arrests Geo for being an accessory to Angela’s murder.
And you thought your high school reunion was awkward...
Geo testifies against Calvin and gets five years in prison for her part in the crime. Shortly after she begins serving her sentence, Calvin breaks out of jail, and Kaiser is sure that Geo is still holding things back. Five years later as Geo is about to be released, fugitive Calvin kills more people in such a way that is designed to draw Geo’s attention. Geo just wants to try to rebuild her life, but Kaiser is still sure she’s keeping secrets even as he finds it increasingly hard to deny the attraction he feels towards her.
When you summarize the plot it sounds like the set-up to TV movie you might see on Lifetime that would have a title like My Lover Killed My Best Friend. One of the great things about this book is that it doesn’t play out that way at all. Jennifer Hillier has written both Geo and Kaiser in such a way that they seem like real people. We know that despite moving on with her life that Geo was filled with shame and regret, and we also see from her time in prison that she’s both tough and intelligent. Kaiser has his own issues, and it’s clear that he never entirely got over his feelings for Geo even as he’s shocked and angry when he realizes why she distanced herself from him back then.
The clever thing here is the structure which manages to start the story at one point in time, flashback to their high school days repeatedly, and then still move forward five years as well. So we see Geo and Kaiser at various stages in their lives, all of which turns out to be important to the plot.The book also seems to lay out the whole sordid tale right up front, and then manages to somehow make us feel like we know Geo’s story completely even as there are nagging clues that indicate that, just as Kaiser suspects, there’s more to this then she’s told everyone.
When the answers come at the end, it’s done in a way that provides shocking revelations and surprises, and the story doesn’t play out in the way I expected at all. Yet Hillier plays fair, and doesn’t pull any tricks to make this work. It’s all been built up via excellent character work to make it all pay in the end.
I picked this one up at Bouchercon 2019 in Dallas after seeing Hillier on a couple of panels where she talked a bit about this novel, and she seemed very sharp and funny. The book lived up to what I hoped for and then some....more
This novel starts out in a seedy motel room as two shady people with a hollowed-out Bible full of stolen cocaine buy fake IDs.
We’ve all been there, rThis novel starts out in a seedy motel room as two shady people with a hollowed-out Bible full of stolen cocaine buy fake IDs.
We’ve all been there, right?
The couple we know as Jack and Summer are desperate to leave their old lives behind, and they quickly make their way to a small East Texas college town where they plan to sell the coke and get their act together. Sort of. What we soon see is that Jack and Summer’s partnership is based around a combination of grifting and drug dealing. Summer plays the typical hippie college girl whose spacey persona hides a knack for inserting herself in social circles and identifying the weak spots that can be exploited. Jack acts as Summer’s friendly dealer who is always looking to sell or score bigger quantities.
They’ve got a good racket going, but it becomes apparent why the two of them are constantly on the move. While they’re smart and sly enough to con some local college kids and dealers for a while, they’re a little too fond of their own products. They’ve also got a dysfunctional, non-romantic relationship in which they frequently end up trying to sabotage each other only to realize time again that the other person is the only one who knows the ‘real’ version. When fueled by drugs and paranoia they create explosive situations that do immense damage to those around them.
This is a helluva crime novel that sets up a scenario that depends almost entirely on making you understand these two self-destructive agents of chaos. Jack and Summer are unforgettable characters, and the writing deftly made me shift from feeling sorry for them to being absolutely sure that they were pure evil. After a variety of twist and turns that I didn’t see coming it ends the only way it could. There’s also a great sense of verisimilitude to the various Texas settings and situations like small time drug dealing in a college town.
I got this novel by chance when I picked it as one of the freebies available when I attended Bouchercon in Dallas. I chose this one just based on the description without knowing anything else about it or the author, and I was pleasantly surprised when I later saw Eryk Pruitt hosting a very fun Noir At The Bar event. Then the next day he moderated an excellent panel on modern noir so I made a point of seeking him out later and getting this one signed. Now I’m very glad I got a chance to meet him because he’s a writer I want to read more of. ...more
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