“All he knew with sure was that his thoughts now converged around the idea of flying home to Nigeria to spirit away Ngene and sell the deity to Mr. Gruels. At first, the thought had scandalized him. He had tried to rebuke himself; he upbraided himself in all the stern silent languages he knew. In spite of his effort, he had found the temptation impossible to shake off. His waking hours were now often preoccupied with speculating what price the deity might command? He peered into what he always took to be his soul. He reminded himself how unlike him it was to peel away at all considerations until all that remained was the vulgar question of dollars and cents. Still his resolve was unyielding.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (FEB 15, 2014)

Foreign Gods Inc. by Ndibe is one of those rare books that has you laughing and crying at different intervals. It is well-written, excellently characterized and the story line is near perfect. I enjoyed this reading experience immensely.

Ike (pronounced E-Kay) is a Nigerian in America, a graduate of the elite Amherst College who has been driving cab in New York City for thirteen years because he can not get a job despite graduating cum laude and majoring in economics. He is told at job interview after job interview that his accent is too thick and he is not a good candidate for a public relations or financial position. He is at his wits end. His bills are overdue, his ex has taken him for everything he has, and he is now up to his ears in gambling debts.

As the book opens, Ike has the idea of going to a gallery called Foreign Gods Inc. and trying to sell them a statue, one that resides in his home village of Utonki. The statue is of the God of War, Ngene, a powerful god of war that served his people for centuries. At this time, Ike’s uncle is its protector. Ike believes that Negene is very powerful and will get him hundreds of thousands of dollars and take him out of debt. His mother has been begging him for money as has his sister. He has not sent them any support money for years.

Ike talks to Mark Gruel, the owner of Foreign Gods Inc. who tells Ike that he must bring the statue to him before he can tell how much it is worth. Ike decides to go back to his hometown in Nigeria and steal the statue and bring it back to New York. It is in Nigeria that a comedy of errors occurs and the reader is given the amazing history of the old and new Nigeria, the collision of the christian beliefs with the traditional religion. Ike is caught in the middle and ultimately we are left to wonder “Did he have the guts to snatch the statue of Ngene and sell it?”

The story unwinds slowly and resolutely, leading the reader from New York to Nigeria and back to New York again. We follow Ike with all of his conflicting beliefs and moral ambiguity. He is a complex and intelligent man trying to make a life for himself and for his family, while at the same time that life may end up destroying the very family he is trying to save.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 18 readers
PUBLISHER:	Soho Press (January 14, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Okey Ndibe
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin

Bibliography:

• Foreign Gods, Inc. (January 2014)

“Do you remember?” Mitch said staring out the darkened window, “how we used to talk about the rich guys, the CEOs and politicians? How we used to hate them for acting in their own interests instead of for the good of everyone else

“We went into this thinking we were going to stick it to guys like that. Like Johnny. People who broke the rules for their own good. And now here we are. Thinking the same way.”

Book Review:

Review by Devon Shepherd  AUG 6, 2011)

The titular novices of Marcus Sakey’s recent novel, The Amateurs, are four friends, three men and one woman, who band together against the frigidity of Chicago’s winters and the loneliness of urban life to form the Thursday Night Drinking Club. But amateur drinkers these four are not – experts in the art of throwing back martinis, the first thing any of these four do in a time of crisis is reach for a bottle of vodka. If only the same could be said for their foray into the criminal underworld.

Rounding thirty, they are poster children for urban ennui: Alex is a former law-student whose sideline as a bartender turned full-time ten years ago when his now-ex wife gave birth to their daughter, Cassie; Ian, a trader with a coke problem, flew too high, too fast with a phenomenal trade in undervalued Hudson-Pollam Biolabs stock, only to face increasing loss and derision as he stalks the financial markets, looking for another off-the-radar meteor to ride back to his seat among the stars; Mitch is a bookish hotel doorman who carries a torch for Jenn, the only female member of their drinking crew, but lacks the spine to do anything about it; Jenn is a travel agent who dreams of travelling herself but can’t seem to commit to making it happen, much like she can’t seem to commit to any of the men she dates, content to coast along on what is left of her good looks. If the group reads like a clichéd list of youngish urbanites, well that is largely because it is. But in lieu of nuanced characters, Mr. Sakey presents us with a moral dilemma.

Imagine you could steal a substantial sum of money, not enough to make you rich, but enough to alleviate some of your immediate problems and broaden your future horizons, would you do it? What if I promised you wouldn’t get caught? Or what if that money belonged to people you knew were overdue for some karmic comeuppance, people like professional criminals?

That is the question the Thursday Night Drinking Crew faces when Alex’s no-good boss, Johnny Love, bullies him into posing as muscle for an after-hours deal. The money for the deal is locked away in a safe, but Alex knows the combination. Resentful of Johnny Love for coercing his participation, Alex tells the crew about the deal. With their last game of “What would you do if . . .. you had half-a-million dollars?” (called “Ready-go” here) still fresh in their minds, the others are primed and ready to fantasize about travelling the world or day trading themselves to a fortune, but the stakes for Alex are much higher.

Cassie’s step-father has received a promotion that requires moving the family to Phoenix. Alex’s ex-wife informs him that, while she has no intention of keeping his daughter from him, due to a series of late or missed child support payments, he doesn’t have a legal say in the matter. Figuring (bizarrely) that making up the late payments will give him the legal right to stop the move, Alex pushes his friends, first Jenn, who he’s casually sleeping with, then Ian, who has developed a gambling problem (and the concomitant debts) to help him steal the money. Following Alex’s lead, the group uses Mitch’s crush on Jenn to coax him out of his reluctance.

Because why should they be shut out when everyone else has their hands in the cookie jar? Bear Stearns is in the midst of collapsing as the sub-prime mortgage crisis guts the economy, leaving many on Wall Street millions, if not billions, of dollars richer. Regular people like them are being stolen from everyday. Why shouldn’t they step up and start taking want they want too?

Ian brings up a problem that has become a classic in both game theory and moral philosophy, The Prisoner’s Dilemma. Although it can take many forms, the dilemma is usually presented in the form of two people getting arrested for a crime. The police know they are guilty, but don’t have enough evidence to press charges. The criminals are separated and told that if they rat out their partner they will go free, but their partner will get 10 years. If both criminals stay silent, they will each get charged with a lesser crime that carries a penalty of, say, 6 months in jail. If both confess, they will split the time, each serving 5 years. What is the rational thing to do here? If maintaining your freedom is a priority, then obviously you’re best off confessing before your friend does. But if the game is repeated, that is, if after the first prisoner confesses, the second prisoner is still given the opportunity to confess, the best thing to do over time is to stay silent, because 6 months (the time served if both stay silent) is better than 5 years (the time served if both confess).
Since the Thursday Night Drinking Club do not belong to the criminal underworld, and do not need to maintain trust and relationships of fellow criminals, there is no iteration of the game for them, and so, according to Ian, they have nothing to lose, and much to gain, by betraying Johnny Love.

But, in moral philosophy, the Prisoner’s Dilemma is often used to illustrate how rational self-interest can produce socially undesirable outcomes. Or to put it another way, the problem describes the tension between self-interest and the interests of the group, because a group where everyone acts in self-interest can sometimes produce individuals that are all worse off than they would have been if they had acted in the interest of the group.

As the four friends plan their heist, they fail to anticipate some obvious contingencies, and the robbery goes the only way it could – horribly wrong. Left with a pile of money and a new set of problems, the group promises to lay low for a while, each swearing not to spend their share of the money until the heat has died down and they’re sure they’re beyond suspicion.

But group interests aren’t enough to keep Alex from breaking their pact and paying his overdue child support. Ian, fearing for their personal safety (when Ian exchanged information about their plan for guns, Katz, the gangster running an illegal casino, threatened the lives of his friends if he didn’t settle immediately following the robbery) pays off his gambling debts. However, word travels fast in the underworld, and Victor, the other end of Johnny Love’s deal, gets wind of this ridiculously inept band of robbers. Not planning on ever having to deal with these criminals again, the group didn’t account for iteration – and as things go from bad to heart-breakingly horrible, they quickly realize that what they made the wrong choice: they should have played it straight instead of betraying a group of known criminals.

Despite all this philosophy – Plato, Nietzsche, and Sartre all get paraphrased for good measure – this is a darkly effervescent book. In this fast-paced and entertaining novel, Mr. Sakey spins the crime genre on its head to ask what happens when regular folk take it into their heads to become criminals.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 25 readers
PUBLISHER:	NAL Trade; Reprint edition (June 7, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Devon Shepherd
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Marcus Sakey
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes

Bibliography:

• The Blade Itself (2007)
• At the City’s Edge (2008)
• Good People (2008)
• The Amateurs (2009)
• Scar Tissue: Stories (2010)
• The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes (June 2011)

“Said it was like someone pried off the lid and showed him how Hollywood really works.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (JUN 20, 2011)

Imagine a kick-ass action flick–say one starring that perennial crowd-pleaser, Bruce Willis, and then imagine the source material, and you’d just about have an image of Duane Swierczynski’s latest book, Fun and Games. This is the first entry in the Charlie Hardie trilogy. Hell and Gone follows in October 2011, and the third novel, Point and Shoot is scheduled for publication in March 2012. Fun and Games delves into the old Hollywood story that studio fixers leap in to stabilize publicity nightmares. This legend has bounced around Hollywood for decades and still lingers over the deaths of notables such as Jean Harlow’s husband, Paul Bern. Recently actor Randy Quaid and his wife fled to Canada and applied for refugee status on the grounds that they are in fear of their lives due to the “Hollywood Star Whackers.” They state that their claims are substantiated by the mysterious deaths of various Hollywood luminaries, including David Carradine.

In an art-follows-life sort of way … enter Fun and Games….

The main character in Fun and Games is professional house sitter, Charlie Hardie. This is the latest gig for a man who hails from Philadelphia and has a shady past which includes a nebulous relationship with Philadelphia police and the FBI. But that was a few years back, and these days, Hardie is in danger of becoming a couch potato:

“Yes, he sort of used to be something like a cop. But that had been three long years ago. A lot of drinking and poor eating and general sloth had atrophied his muscles. He was slower, larger. His liver wasn’t talking to him anymore, and his heart gave him little friendly reminders every so often that he might want to get his ass up and move around a little. The mornings he felt good simply meant that he’d passed out before he could have any more to drink.”

House-sitting allows him to drift around the country while he lives out of a suitcase. Hardie likes to keep it simple, and he has a few rules for house-sitting: “He didn’t do plants, didn’t do pets. He made sure people didn’t steal shit.” His dream gig is to stay in a house, alone, and watch old films. He has only one rule when it comes to film. He won’t watch anything made after he was born. Hardie’s latest job is to watch the isolated Hollywood Hills home of Andrew Lowenbruck, a Hollywood music producer. Given that Lowenbruck has an extensive classic film library, it looks like a dream gig to Hardie, but he hadn’t counted Them into the equation….

When Hardie walks into Lowenbruck’s home, he walks slap bang into a “narrative” about to be staged by The Accident People. This is a team of highly trained, and deadly equipped assassins who are about to snuff out bit part action flick actress, Lane Madden. The Accident People have tried and failed to kill Lane in a fake car accident, so when Hardie walks into the deadly scenario at Lowenbruck’s home, he enters completely unprepared to meet a bruised, terrified, washed up-actress who’s fighting for her life against pissed-off, time-stressed assassins. Not good.

Fun and Games is breathless roller-coaster ride of non-stop action from cover-to-cover. There are simply no down times in the story, and Swierczynski’s comic book roots are evident in the plot and action sequencing. Hardie and Lane make a good team. Hardie is the laconic, practical sort who has walked away from a life he can no longer handle while Lane Madden is the bimbo bit player who discovers untapped reserves of courage and ingenuity. It’s no exaggeration to say that once I picked up this book, I was reluctant to put it down. I’ll hazard a guess that Swierczynski has a hit trilogy in his future.

Has Fun and Games been optioned for the film version yet? If not, Hollywood, what are you waiting for?

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 35 readers
PUBLISHER:	Mulholland Books; Original edition (June 20, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Official blog for Duane Swierczynski
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Bust, Slide and The Maxby Ken Bruen and Jason Starr Zeroville by Steve Erickson

Bibliography:

• Secret Dead Men (2005)
• The Wheel Man (2005)
• Severance Package (2008)
• The Blonde (2007)
• Expiration Date (2010)

Charlie Hardie trilogy:

• Fun and Games (June 2011)
• Hell and Gone (October 2011)
• Point and Shoot (March 2012)

For me, it’s a wall safe. From my somewhat specialized perspective, a wall safe is the perfect object. To you, it may be a hole in the wall with a door on it. To me, it’s one hundred percent potential. There’s absolutely no way to know what’s in there. You can only be sure of one thing: Whatever it is, it means a hell of a lot to somebody. Maybe it’s what they’d run into traffic for. A wall safe is just a question mark. With an answer inside. Janice hadn’t told me there would be a safe behind the picture. We’d discussed everything but that. And, of course, that—meaning the thing I hadn’t anticipated—was what screwed me.

Book Review:

Review by Katherine Petersen  (MAR 20, 2011)

Well-known for his Simeon Grist and Poke Rafferty Bangkok series, Tim Hallinan introduces a new series character in Crashed. Junior Bender is a top-of-the-line crook, hired for specific jobs, and pretty much working when his child support payments come due. Junior is also a private investigator, and most of the time, he works for the down-and-out, the underdog and/or those who can’t defend themselves. In essence, he’s a burglar with a good heart.

Junior’s latest assignment has him stealing a painting from a hard-to-enter home, but he finds a safe containing diamonds while he’s in there which delays his exit. These extra few minutes give the big dogs out back a chance to get inside and launch an attack. Junior’s escape resembles an action scene on the big screen that involves a sedative and a chandelier, and he manages to get out of the house with only cuts and bruises only to find himself in a worse situation: a crooked cop has a gun to his head.

It gets complicated but essentially Junior has to help prevent the sabotage of a porn film or the video of him stealing the painting will be given to the painting’s owner who might, in turn, feed Junior to his dogs. The problem for Junior is the film’s lead is a former child star who captivated viewers for many years before her talent faded and she turned to drugs and lost much of her earnings to lawyers and her interfering mother and jealous brother. Thistle Downing fits the bill as the type of person Junior normally helps. But the plot is complicated and puts Junior in a bind as to how to proceed and remain alive.

Saying Tim Hallinan is a master at plot, characterization and pitch-perfect dialogue is a serious understatement. In the hands of Hallinan’s talent, Junior’s character shines through, and you want him to find a way to make everything work out right. Thistle hasn’t had an easy life, but she’s got sass and spunk along with her drug dependence. Hallinan introduces a bevy of eclectic supporting cast members too, including Doc, a now-unlicensed physician whose personal mission is to help Thistle get clean and Trey Annunziato, a mob boss who is producing the film and many believe had her own father killed. Crashed combines serious issues and laugh-out-loud humor while remaining true to the mystery form. The plot contains enough twists to keep the reader guessing, and it’s a toss-up if you want to race to the end to see what happens or just savor the journey of getting there because you can only read a terrific book for the first time once.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 137 readers
PUBLISHER:	Hallinan Consulting, LLC (November 16, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Katherine Petersen
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Tim Hallinan
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Nail Through the Heart The Fourth Estate Breathing Water Queen of Patpong A previous interview with Timothy Hallinan

Bibliography:

Poke Rafferty, Bangkok series:

• Nail Through the Heart (2007)
• The Fourth Watcher (2008)
• Breathing Water (2009)
• The Queen of Patpong (2010)
• The Fear Artist (2012)

Junior Bender, Burglar series:

• Crashed (2010)
• Little Elvises (2011)
• The Fame Thief (July 2013)

Simeon Grist, Los Angeles series:

• The Four Last Things (1989)
• Everything But the Squeal (1990)
• Skin Deep (1991)
• Incinerator (1992)
• The Bone Polisher (1993)
• The Man with No Time (1994)

“Let’s say you had an opportunity to get your work in front of more people than you ever thought you’d reach, a chance to get more money than you thought you could ever get, but you had to compromise everything you thought you believed in. Would you do it?”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte (AUG 26, 2010)

Struggling writer and coffee barista, Ian Minot, is frustrated and depressed. For one thing, he just can’t seem to write the kind of stories that will get the publishing world’s attention. After all, Ian knows, his life isn’t as glamorous as his Romanian’s girlfriend’s Anya Petrescu, whose travails under Ceausescu, has landed her an attractive publishing contract. In a snide reference to the New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 list, Ian points out that “Anya had recently been named one of American Review’s ‘31 Most Promising Writers Under 31.’ This year, I was too old to qualify,” he adds.

In fact, Anya’s future is on such a meteoric track that Ian is sure she will soon be dating celebrity authors like Gary Shteyngart or Malcolm Gladwell—not some wannabe like Ian Minot. Turns out that Anya does indeed leave Ian but she does so for another kind of celebrity author—Blade Markham. Markham’s memoir, Blade—a hard-hitting story about life in a gang and on drugs, has been selling like hotcakes especially after it won the endorsement of a famous talk show host (an Oprah-like celebrity).

Ian of course can’t stand Blade—he knows his success is not well-deserved, he believes Blade is all fake (he turns out to be) and Blade’s success just serves to reinforce the notion that success in publishing is not always related to talent alone. So one day, when a coffee bar regular whom Ian merely refers to as “The Confident Man” shows up with a copy of Blade tucked under his arm, Ian just loses it and kicks the guy out along with his book.

But Confident Man has some plans—and ideas—of his own. Ian’s violent hatred of Blade is just the fuel that Confident Man, aka Jed Roth, is looking for. He presents Ian with a scheme: take a book that Jed has written, make it Ian’s own, get it published (Jed, who has worked in the publishing industry will help with contacts), then reveal it’s a fake. This “twist,” Jed assures Ian, will get the book even more publicity—so much of it that eventually Ian will be able to get his own stories published without much fuss or delay. As crazy as the idea sounds, Ian is roped in. After all, he doesn’t have much to lose. And Jed Roth, who would like nothing better than to rub the publishing industry’s nose in its own filth (for many reasons of his own) has much to gain.

So what follows, is an amazingly tight caper that involves some wild goose chases and a plot that twists and turns to reveal the true color of people and situations as we go along.

Adam Langer’s work has always been clever and on the cutting edge and this one is no exception. For anyone following contemporary literature closely there are plenty of references sure to tickle the funny bone. Langer has even coined a special language centered on these literary references. For example, “Franzens” stand for a particular kind of eyeglasses favored by the author Jonathan Franzen. Author Michael Chabon’s hair is all the rage—anybody who has a wild mane of hair has a “chabon.” References to boxed reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and appearances on Fresh Air with Terry Gross also abound, and all these elements together serve as a delicious lampooning of the publishing industry as a whole.

There are some places when you can get tired of these little bits of cleverness—as in when Langer writes out Anya’s Romanian accent in italics. “She was sure that eff’ryone would hett eet, that refyooers would reep eet to shreds and call her a tellentliss leetle feek.” This is really funny at first but gets annoying towards the end after its novelty wears out.

What really elevates The Thieves of Manhattan is that it is also a novel about kindness and authenticity. It is a wonderfully paced and well-edited novel—a taut page-turner.

“Writing a book can be a profoundly optimistic act; expecting someone to read, buy, and publish it is always a phenomenally presumptuous one. Why would a marketing department put money behind anything you wrote? Why would someone you didn’t know spend twenty-five dollars to read your stories of small people leading small lives?” Jed Roth once asks of Ian. Langer’s new book shows us why. Despite all its clever contrivances, Thieves never loses its focus and in the end is a good dose of vibrant old-fashioned storytelling.

Not only is The Thieves of Manhattan a funny and wild caper, it’s also a touching story about Ian Minot—a small person leading a small life. Until of course, something very big happens to him.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 41  readers
PUBLISHER:	Spiegel & Grau (July 13, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Adam Langer
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Ellington Avenue Another writer things about a short cut to money: Dear Money by Martha McPhee and more satire on the publishing business: Grub by Elise Blackwell

Bibliography:

• Crossing California 2004)
• The Washington Story (2005)
• Ellington Boulevard: A Novel in A-Flat (2008)
• My Father’s Bonus March (2009)
• The Thieves of Manhattan (2010)
• The Salinger Contract (September 2013)

“I was particularly anxious to get together with Jeeves and hear what he had to say about the strange experience through which I had just passed, as strange an e. as had come my way in what you might call a month of Sundays.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Poornima Apte (AUG 18, 2010)

For me, P. G. Wodehouse and eighth grade totally belong together. I spent all of eighth grade reading whatever Wodehouse I could get my hands on and totally inhabited the lives of Bertie Wooster, Jeeves and Blandings Castle. I still remember my friends and I writing letters to each other in the Wodehouse style: “How are you? Hope you’re in the pink of h.” That sort of stuff.

That instantly recognizable style of writing is also here in Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen—one of the many Wodehouse novels being re-released by Overlook Press for the 25th anniversary of his death. This is a Jeeves caper, which means the stoic butler is again rescuing his employer, Bertie Wooster, from comically sticky situations.

Most Wodehouse works are elaborately plotted and quite theatrical. In the best of Wodehouse writing there are many layers of comedic problems to be resolved and the humor arises from the various entanglements the characters find themselves in. A fair amount of the comedy is also physical—characters literally falling into and out of traps much to their surprise. In that sense they are perfect material for sitcoms. In fact a few of the “Fraser” episodes seemed to have a Wodehouse touch—characters walking in and out of doors into situations that only the viewer (reader) understood the humor of.

It wasn’t just Wodehouse’s infinitely loopy plots and comedic situations that made his stories so funny. There was also the writing. Although arguably Wodehouse didn’t do as much irony as is otherwise a cornerstone of British comedy, his writing nevertheless shows a dry sense of humor. His was also a style of writing that showed an immense respect of and love for the language—in that sense too, it was very “English.” Bertie Wooster, for example, often consults with Jeeves about the mot juste to describe many of his feelings. Here’s an example:

“I shall begin by saying that Miss Cook, to whom I’m engaged, is a lady for whom I have the utmost esteem and respect, but on certain matters we do not…what’s the expression?’
‘See eye-to-eye sir?’
‘That’s right. And unfortunately those matters are the what’d-you-call-it of my whole policy. What is it that policies have?’
‘I think the word for which you are groping, sir, may possibly be cornerstone.’

Back to the book, in Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, Bertie is recommended a visit to the countryside by his doctor who thinks such a stay could do wonders for his health. As is to be expected in a Jeeves caper, even the sleepy little town of Somerset is wired full of traps and doesn’t give Bertie a moment’s rest.

In the story, Bertie’s Aunt Dahlia books him a cottage in town. Before long this rental is being used as a point of rendezvous between two lovers—Vanessa Cook and Orlo Porter. Ms. Cook once rejected Bertie’s own advances and here, after a huge fight with her boyfriend, she attaches herself to Bertie instead. This is unwelcome news to Bertie and he must find a way of saying No to the pushy Vanessa. A parallel plot revolves around the theft of a cat—a cat that has a vital role to play in an upcoming horse race.

As with other Jeeves stories, complications arise at many points until the end when everything gets resolved well and the story has a happy ending.

Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen isn’t the best of Wodehouse’s very entertaining work. While the dashes of humor and the style of writing are still here, the plot is not as elaborately plotted as the Jeeves ones usually are. In other words, for a reader new to Wodehouse, this would not be the book to start with. I would recommend Leave it to Jeeves or Pigs Have Wings (a great introduction to the fun at Blandings Castle) instead.

But for those familiar with Wodehouse and Jeeves, Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen will serve up some good chuckles—it’s light-hearted reading especially on a dreary afternoon. Wodehouse aficionados will relish revisiting with Bertie, Aunt Dahlia and Jeeves and adding this handsome volume to their collection. For me, it definitely was a nice trip down Memory L.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 5 readers
PUBLISHER:	Overlook Hardcover (April 2, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on P.G. Wodehouse
EXTRAS:	Wikipedia on Jeeves
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More Wodehouse on MostlyFiction: Galahad at Blandings

Partial Bibliography:

Jeeves and Bertie:

• My Man Jeeves: Stories (1919)
• The Inimitable Jeeves: Stories (1923)
• Carry On, Jeeves: Stories (1925)
• Very Good, Jeeves: Stories (1930)
• Thank You, Jeeves (1934)
• Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)
• The Code of the Woosters (1938)
• Joy in the Morning (1946)
• Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954)
• The Return of Jeeves (1953)
• Jeeves in the Offing (1960)
• Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1969)
• Much Obliged, Jeeves (1971)
• Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen (1974)

Also, a story in each of these collections:

• A Few Quick Ones (1959)
• Plum Pie (1971)

Newest Jeeves story:

• Jeeves and the Wedding Bells (November 2013)

“Amaaaaazing dope, amazing grace, it makes her skin tingle. Gets her horny. Big wow, air gets O horny.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (JUL 31, 2010)

Savages is a unique romp on the wild side. Its anti-heroes, Ben, Chon and O (or multiple O as she’s fondly known) are a cast of characters you gotta love. Ben and Chon are the greatest developers and suppliers of hydroponic weed in Laguna Beach and they have a loyal following. Their weed can be custom made for just the kind of high you want. They provide for the rich and famous. They live well and have been happily supplying their customers for years.

Chon is a hard-edged guy with two tours of Afghanistan under his belt as a SEAL. He knows how to target shoot from a mile away and killing a man does not faze him. He’s not one to piss off. When he was a child, his father put him on a mantel and told him to jump. Chon jumped and his father didn’t catch him. Maybe that’s why Chon doesn’t trust anybody.

Ben is Chon’s partner but they are as unalike as any two friends can be. When he’s not working on their weed plantations or stash houses, Ben is gone for months at a time, in Africa helping Congolese women or putting in wells in Myanmar. He’s got a sense of social conscience. He was raised in a loving, liberal Jewish household by two psychotherapists who were also communists.

And then there’s O, or multiple O, both nicknames short for Ophelia. She is close friends with both her men, more than friends actually. She can’t choose one over the other nor does she want to choose. She loves them both and they are all happy with the relationship that they have. She has a mother named PAQU who is not Indian. It’s O’s nickname for her and stands for Passive Aggressive Queen of the Universe. Actually, despite making fun of her mother, O and she are friends.

Everything is great in Laguna Heaven until the Baja Cartel wants to take over Ben and Chon’s operation. Ben and Chon don’t want any part of this arrangement so the cartel kidnaps O to try and get them to reconsider. Ben and Chon decide to take their chances and save O along with the respectability of their business. They take on the cartel.

We get to hear about all the bad guys, their home lives and the drug cartel wars. In this sense it reminded me of the best of The Sopranos. Lado, “The Cold One,” one of the top men in the cartel has a miserable home life. He’s having an affair with a beautician and his wife can smell it on him. Naturally, she doesn’t want Lado to get near her. In the wicked cartel world, Lado is known for his sadism and wickedness. He beheads people, for god’s sake. At home, he watches little league and eats a lot. Esteban is Lado’s protégé and he is guarding O. Together, they watch The Biggest Loser and Bachelorettes.

The book’s first chapter is two words on one page – – “Fuck you.” Not many books could pull this off but this book does. It is a wonderful read. It is written in terse, pithy, crisp language. The chapters are often less than a page long and are frequently formatted like poetry. The format fits the fast-paced movement and action themes of the book deliciously. I guarantee, you’re in for a wild read with these savages.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 49 readers
PUBLISHER:	Simon & Schuster; 1 edition (July 13, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Don Winslow
EXTRAS:	Bookslut interview with Don Winslow
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Satori The Dawn Patrol California Fire and Life The Winter of Frankie Machine And another “pot” book: The Financial Lives of Poets by Jess Walter

Bibliography:

• The Death and Life Of Bobby Z (1997)
• California Fire and Life (1999)
• The Power Of The Dog (2005)
• The Winter of Frankie of Machine (September 2007)
• The Dawn Patrol (June 2008)
• Savages (July 2010)
• Satori (March 2011)

Neil Carey Series:

• Cool Breeze on the Underground (1991)
• The Trail to Buddha’s Mirror (1992)
• Way Down On The High Lonely (1993)
• A Long Walk Up The Water Slide (1994)
• While Drowning In The Desert (1996)
• Isle Of Joy (1996)

Movies from Books:

• Bobby Z (2006)
• Savages

“People have searched for these paintings for twenty years,” she said. “The police, the FBI, Interpol, private detectives, insurance detectives, art historians, treasure hunters. People have spent an enormous amount of energy trying to find these things, but no one has done it yet. There have been lots of theories about who was responsible. The most popular is that the IRA teamed up with the Boston mob to do the job, then split the take between the two groups.”

Book Review:

Review by Kirstin Merrihew (MAR 1, 2010)

Among Thieves opens its prologue with a man from Ireland named Liam about to finish off “a lump of flesh curled in front of him on the cement floor.” He had tortured “the lump” for information that he had not gotten. While looking down at the man, Murphy, Liam remembered how, when he was a child in Belfast, a vengeance killing left him the only survivor in his immediate family. This grisly event had put him on his current path of mayhem and murder.

Next, Boston attorney Scott Finn enters the Nashua Street Jail to visit Devon Malley, a guy he knew back in the day when he wasn’t such an upstanding citizen either. Devon is in the joint for what looks like a smash-and-grab at a very expensive clothing and lingerie store. But as Scott, his paralegal, Lissa Krantz, and his investigator, Tom Kozlowski, soon discover, defending Devon is no piece of cake. Not to mention this could well become a pro bono case that could end up costing much more than foregone greenbacks.

And then there is Devon’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Sally (yes, Sally Malley) who needs somewhere to stay while her old man’s in the slammer. Scott knows from personal experience what the foster care system is like and decides to let her stay in his spare room until her father’s bail hearing. Sally, who lived her early years with her druggie mother and had had to fend off some of the men her mom brought home, locks the guest room door just in case. She also puts up the expected teenage wall, and it is up to Scott, Lissa, and Tom to get her to come out from behind it.

Meanwhile, a team of Boston cops and an FBI agent work the case of cut-up-and-dead Murphy, a well-known member of the mob. Then they are called to another crime scene where four men have been shot to death and a fifth one’s body looks like a filleted fish. This second tortured lump is Eddie Ballick, an underworld boss, who would have preferred being a fisherman to a life of crime. Scott had gone to see Ballick about Devon the day before, hoping to get information that he might be able to trade to the prosecution on his client’s behalf about others involved in the store robbery. However, Ballick isn’t cooperative even though he and Scott knew each other way back. When Scott is asked by the police to come answer questions about Ballick’s murder, Scott stalls them. He first goes to the courthouse to try to get bail for Devon. He also tells Devon what happened to Ballick, and that totally changes Devon’s mind about wanting his freedom. He knows only too well he could be next on the vicious killer’s list.

Devon and Liam, as told in Among Thieves, were the two men who robbed the Gardner Museum back in March 1990, getting away with artwork now estimated at over half a billion dollars. And Liam is methodically working through the men most likely to know where the paintings are stashed. However, the Boston mobster at the top of that list is out of Liam’s reach because he’s been on the run for years. That man is Jimmy “Whitey” Bulger.

Bulger is a real person who has made appearances of sorts in various novels including Along Comes a Stranger, by Dorie McCullough Lawson. Whether he makes one in Among Thieves will remain for readers to discover. Whether he does or not, he is considered by this novel to have been one of the men behind the thefts at the Gardner Museum. As the introductory quote notes, the theory that U.S. organized crime partnered with the IRA to pull off this crime is a popular one, and Bulger headed the Boston crime world back then. Ulrich Boser’s The Gardner Heist, a 2008 examination of facts and theories about this unsolved armed robbery, mentions Bulger as a credible culprit, and the author became so engrossed in this possibility that he even traveled to Galway Bay, Ireland thinking he might track Bulger down there.

For Scott Finn and his associates, Liam — who clearly will stop at nothing get his hands on the paintings — is the primary problem, not Bulger. After Devon spills why he got himself arrested in the first place and why he doesn’t want to leave the jail, they realize defending him could also put their lives at grave risk. Without a means to getting at Devon directly, Liam might target one of them — or target Sally. And the prospect of dying like Murphy and Ballick strikes cold fear in the hearts of all the potential victims.

As the magnitude of their client’s criminal past dawns on them, Finn, Tom, and Lissa, in quite realistic and sometimes funny scenes, also become attached to Sally — and she, grudgingly, to them. I did too, which isn’t always the case when an author decides to make a rather unsocial teen into a major character. Anyway, by the time Sally might be sighted in Liam’s crosshairs, Hosp’s trio and readers like me actually want her to survive the novel and to perhaps turn fifteen in Scott Finn’s next adventure. Generally, these four characters are believable people for whom one gladly roots. The same can be said for the police partners, about whom Hosp provides some interesting back story.

David Hosp’s threesome of Finn, Krantz, and Kozlowski reminds me somewhat of Michael Connelly’s best-seller fictional defense attorney, Mikey Haller, and his own squad of associates. For example, Haller’s investigator, Dennis Wojchiechowski, and his assistant, Lorna Taylor, are an item, and this parallels the relationship of Tom and Lissa. While reading Among Thieves, I thought of Connelly’s The Brass Verdict a few times. Although their plots are not that similar, both Finn and Haller have to deal with less than forthcoming or cooperative clients and must mull over some serious legal ethics issues.

Finn and Haller also have in common that they each “star” in a book series. In Finn’s case, Dark Harbor and Innocence, have both been quite enthusiastically received by the public and critics.

Unlike Connelly, Hosp is an attorney. Whether this primary profession gives him a leg up or he simply has a knack for writing clear legal suspense, this novel is easily followed by readers without a legal background. Once though I thought Hosp had decided he was writing for fourth graders who hadn’t learned their fractions or percentages yet: “In her fifteen years on the detective squad, she’d cleared over seventy-five percent of her cases. That meant if a case was assigned to her, three out of four times someone was convicted of the crime.” And then, two sentences later, Hosp again turned math teacher. But that’s a minor quibble.

What really happened to the stolen Gardner art remains shrouded in mystery, but Among Thieves has done its homework regarding the facts that are available and the conjectures that have grown from those facts. The novel’s practically minute-by-minute scenario of how the heist might have gone down is entirely plausible. The trick for someone writing about this monumental, real unsolved art crime is devising a conclusion that supplies adequate resolution and yet doesn’t violate what the the real world knows to be true about the paintings. Hosp meets those requirements ingeniously. The climax of Hosp’s Among Thieves revs the drama and steps up the unpredictability.The tension mounts as Liam, Devon, Sally, our three musketeers, and the cops and feds all converge. Some of them won’t breathe much longer. All because a man who once knifed masterpieces from their frames desperately wants possession of them again.

Bookdom’s legal thriller genre isn’t a lonely place; Hosp’s series faces stiff competition. However, it can stand up to it and shoulder out pedestal space all its own.

Bibliography:

Scott Finn series

• Dark Harbor (June 2005)
• Innocence (July 2007)
• Among Thieves (January 2010)

Stand-alone:

• The Betrayed (July 2006)

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 60 readers
PUBLISHER:	Grand Central Publishing; 1 edition (January 11, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Kirstin Merrihew
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	David Hosp
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Dark Harbor The Betrayed And other Boston Mystery writers: Dennis Lehane William G. Tapply Richard Marinick John F. Dobbyn

“Seems to me,” he eventually offered, “we’re all up to something, Mike—even you. That means there’s going to be winners and losers. Want to take a bet which side I’ll be on?”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage (JAN 29, 2010)

The title of Ian Rankin’s latest stand-alone crime thriller is Doors Open, and this title has both literal and figurative meanings. Figuratively the title refers to the “open doors” of opportunities and decisions. “Open doors” are those moments when we glimpse the possibilities of choice and a different sort of future, and during those moments we decide whether or not to pass through that open door, or just walk away….

The idea of missed opportunities and different futures certainly rankles the “three musketeers”–a nickname given to three male friends by Laura Stanton, an attractive Edinburgh art dealer. The three men, who hang out at art auctions together, at first glance seem to make unlikely friends. There’s Robert Gissing, a professor on the verge of retirement, middle-aged bank executive Allan Cruickshank who’s going through an expensive divorce, and millionaire Mike Mackenzie. Of the three men, only Mackenzie can afford to buy paintings at auctions, but the painting he really wants isn’t for sale.

One day, Gissing suggests a plan; as a respected art critic, with access to galleries and their vaults, Gissing proposes a bold plan to rob a vault that stores priceless overstock–the paintings Edinburgh galleries don’t display due to space considerations. Gissing, who’s obviously given this a great deal of thought, proposes to raid the overstock vaults of the National Galleries during Doors Open day–a period when security is somewhat relaxed as the public descends for the free-admission access to Edinburgh landmarks that either normally charge for entrance or are usually closed to the public.

While Gissing’s plan is well-thought through, so much can potentially go wrong, and at first while the more cautious Cruickshank is wary of the idea, Mackenzie leaps at the chance to steal the painting he covets. Rankin builds a credible story by depicting characters who see the heist as an opportunity to correct their lives. Gissing, given to rants about those hoarders and collectors who buy art just to hide it away in their private collections, hypocritically seeks to do the very same thing; Cruickshank has reached a dead-end in his personal life and in his career, and he’s secretly thrilled to think he could steal two paintings that even his bank cannot afford to buy, and Mackenzie, who becomes a driving force in the heist, begins to have delusions of himself as a tough guy.

Rankin’s psychological insights into the minds of his characters add a great deal to this crime tale, and these insights certainly go a long way towards explaining why someone like Mackenzie–a man who can afford to buy almost everything he wants–would risk getting his hands dirty. Mackenzie is well-matched with his polar opposite, Cruickshank, and it’s clear that while the bank executive wouldn’t go through that “open door” if the decision is left up to him, he’s dragged along into this mess by his personal failures, Gissing’s confidence and also deeply hidden envy of the much wealthier Mackenzie.

Mackenzie is the main character here. Fate causes him to run into an old schoolmate, Chib Calloway, an Edinburgh crime boss whose power is waning. Calloway sees the heist as a segue into greater criminal opportunities, and some of the novel’s best scenes concern Mackenzie impressing Cruickshank with this seemingly practiced criminal actions, while conversely Calloway understands that Mackenzie is, essentially, an amateur.

Scottish author Ian Rankin is probably best known for his Rebus novels, and 2009 brought the publication of Exit Music–a novel that announced the end of Rebus’s less-than-stellar career. Actually I have hopes that Rebus will return in retirement, but it’s good to read Rankin’s stand-alone thriller. While we don’t have time to get fond of the characters in this heist tale, Rankin doesn’t spend all the pages on the chills and thrills of plotting a robbery. He also examines questions of boredom, ownership, and how the desire to impress others has an addictive, toxic lure.

Bibliography:

Inspector Rebus Mysteries:

• Knots and Crosses (1987)
• Hide and Seek (1991)
• Wolfman (1992) (published as Tooth and Nail in US)
• A Good Hanging (1992)
• Strip Jack (1992)
• The Black Book (1993)
• Mortal Causes (1994)
• Let It Bleed (1996)
• Black and Blue (1997)
• The Hanging Garden (1998)
• Dead Souls (1999)
• Set in Darkness (2000)
• The Falls (2001)
• Resurrection Men (2002, February 2003 in US)
• A Question of Blood (February 2004)
• Fleshmarket Alley (February 2005)
• The Naming of the Dead (April 2007)
• Exit Music (September 2008)

Short Story Collections:

• A Good Hanging and Other Stories (1992) (Inspector Rebus stories )
• Hebert In Motion and other stories (1997)
• Death is not the End : a novella (Inspector Rebus) (1998)
• Rebus: The Early Years (1999)
• Rebus: The St. Leonard’s Years (2001)
• Beggars Banquet: Stories (2002) (21 stories, 7 include Inspector Rebus)

Other Novels:

• The Flood (1986)
• Watchman (1991)
• Death is Not The End (1998, 2000 in US)
• Doors Open (January 2010)
• The Complaints (March 2011)

Originally written as Jack Harvey:

• Witch Hunt (1993) *
• Bleeding Hearts (1994) *
• Blood Hunt (1995) *

*All three thrillers are published in The Jack Harvey Novels (2000)

“Mr. Harsh, the only way I will deal with you is to buy you. I do not care to work with you on any other basis. I buy you or nothing. You are a cheap man, so buying you will not be expensive. Get it straight—I buy you, or I have nothing to do with you.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage (NOV 7, 2009)

In Honey In His Mouth from pulp author Lester Dent, Walter Harsh is a nomadic, small-time grifter who makes a tenuous living selling photographs. Partnering with whichever woman he happens to be involved with, and working under the guise of National Studios of Hollywood, Harsh moves from town-to-town hustling customers to buy more photographs than they’d planned to when they “won” the free 8×10 portraits. It’s a low rent, sleazy operation, but it’s a living. Unfortunately, Harsh ripped off a supplier to the tune of $720 for photographic supplies. So when the supplier spots Harsh in a gas station, he’s out–not just for his money–but revenge too on the “thieving bastard” who took him for an idiot.

The car chase ends with Harsh in hospital with a broken arm. At first Harsh thinks he’s lucky to be alive, but when Harsh’s story doesn’t quite add up, a nosy sheriff begins sniffing for the truth, and Harsh, stuck in hospital recuperating–is worried that he’ll end up in the slammer.

As the net tightens around Harsh, suddenly his luck seems to change. Fellow grifter and accomplice, the avaricious, “well-stacked little trollop” Vera Sue shows up at the hospital along with a man known only as “Brother.” Brother presents Harsh with an offer of an unspecified job for $50,000. Harsh may be desperate, but he’s no fool. Every attempt to question Brother leads to a dead end, but since the sheriff is still pushing for answers, Harsh finds himself blackmailed into going along with Brother’s plans…whatever they may be….

Harsh soon finds himself a “guest” in a sprawling, beachside Florida villa, staring at the safe that contains his $50,000, but this $50,000 is just a chunk of what’s really at stake. The problem is that with a pot worth millions, everyone has their own ideas of who “deserves” the loot and who should get the biggest cut. None of the players trust each other, everyone has a separate and secret game afoot, and many old scores have yet to be settled.

Thrown into this classic noir plot is a womanizing South American dictator who models himself on Mussolini (one of his heroes), a handful of the dictator’s “trusted” advisors who’ve been busy transferring the dictator’s misappropriated funds to American banks, and Miss Muirz, the dictator’s beautiful but pissed-off discarded mistress. This avaricious, vicious blend of characters all appear in Honey In His Mouth–the story of a small time grifter who may very well have hit the big time.

Honey In His Mouth was originally written in 1956–just three years before the book’s author, Lester Dent died. Dent is one of the great pulp fiction writers of the 20th century who is best remembered for his most famous fictional creation, Doc Savage. But while Doc Savage is a larger-than-life fictional hero, Walter Harsh is a morally corrupt, nasty piece of work who rightly belongs between the pages of a noir novel.

This is the first ever publication of Dent’s novel, and once again it’s thanks to the dedication of Hard Case Crime that these lost gems see the light of day. For noir, crime and pulp fans, Hard Case Crime is a great, inexpensive way to discover new and almost-forgotten authors.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 3 readers
PUBLISHER:	Hard Case Crime (September 29, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AMAZON PAGE:	Honey in His Mouth
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Lester Dent Lester Dent, Doc Savage Novelist
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More Hard Case Crime: Fake I.D. by Jason Starr Killing Castro by Lawrence Block Quarry in the Middle by Max Allan Collins

Bibliography (currently in print only):

• Doc Savage: The Lost Radio Scripts Of Lester Dent (February 2009)
• The Skull Squadron: The Air War Stories of Lester Dent (July 2009)
• Dead Men’s Bones: The Air Adventure Stories of Lester Dent (July 2009)
• Honey in His Mouth (September 2009)