Standup Guy by Stuart Woods

Standup Guy is the latest in a long series of Stuart Woods novels featuring his Stone Barrington character.  Descriptions like hound dog, alley cat, slime ball, and lucky bastard all come to mind when attempting to characterize Stone Barrington.  Standup Guy is a continuation of the same.

John Fratelli is an ex-con who has just completed a 25 year jail sentence for armed robbery.  He visits Stone seeking legal advice on a sensitive financial issue.  Fratelli’s former now deceased cell mate gifted him the contents of a safe deposit box containing $2 million dollars.  The money was the unrecovered proceeds of a heist at JFK airport some 20 years earlier.  Stone advises that while the statute of limitations has expired on the crime, others involved in the crime may attempt to scalp a share of the ill-gotten gains.  He tells Fratelli to deposit the money in less than $10,000 increments (to avoid IRS interest) and disappear for a while.  Predictably, a secret service agent, a former FBI agent, and a couple of goons pay visits to Stone asking about the money.  The goons take shots at Stone and at Fratelli to try to intimidate their way into a share of the cache.

Meanwhile, Stone meets a new lady friend, Henrietta Cromwell a/k/a Hank that he manages to bed on the second date.  She is kidnapped while leaving his highly secured home apparently by the goons looking for Fratelli’s money.  Enter Stone’s best friend Dino (now chief of detectives for NYPD) to get her back.  In the midst of the havoc, Stone schedules a quick trip to London to visit his main squeeze the highly successful fashion designer, Emma Tweed and while in New York receives a visit from his longtime friend with benefits, Holly Barker, now a CIA operative.  Oh, and the President and First Lady involve him in a campaign to nominate the First Lady as the next Presidential candidate… all in a day’s work, I guess.

I don’t know what else to say about Stuart Woods’ Stone Barrington series that hasn’t already been said.  The challenge when reading is to keep your place while rolling your eyes and thinking ‘Oh, Brother.’  Yet sarcasm aside, Woods cranks out one ridiculous book after another to a fan base that loves him.  So when looking for a light fluffy read with not much intellectual stimulation, Stuart Woods’ Stone Barrington novels can fill that niche.  It doesn’t matter which one, they are all pretty much the same.