Stealing Sturgis is the first Matthew Iden novel I’ve
read that does not feature his Marty Singer character. Consequently, I was supremely disappointed.
Randy Watson
gets out of prison and heads to his hometown of Brumley. Brumley is a small burg in Southwestern
Virginia and doesn’t offer much in the way of employment. Lee Baylor, a former high school friend to
Randy owns an auto repair garage but can barely generate enough cash to make
his mortgage payments… a fact that Lee’s girlfriend, Raylene won’t let him
forget. Nonetheless, he hires Randy
hoping to raise his volume of business.
After a few weeks Lee’s plan just isn’t working and the bank threatens
to foreclose. Randy, always looking for
the quick easy score, comes up with a scheme to visit the annual motorcycle rally
in Sturgis, North Dakota and steal Jason Ford’s vintage motorcycle. Ford is a somewhat successful movie star/
producer who gets his grins from slumming with his biker buddies in Sturgis
every year. Randy and Lee now desperate
for a break, head for Sturgis with larceny on their minds and a half-baked plan
to strike it rich. They don’t know that Ford
is near financial bankruptcy himself. Plus, Raylene has sent her hillbilly thug
brother to Sturgis to bring Lee home. So
the outlaws’ plans have bigger risks and smaller rewards than they’d hoped.
I love Iden’s
Marty Singer series and thus picked up Stealing
Sturgis with great expectations.
While the writing is sound and the plot plausible, I just don’t like the
characters. I can’t relate to them or feel
any empathy for their situation… it’s like Dumb and Dumber without the comedy
or the heart. I advise taking a pass on
this one and wait for Iden’s next Marty Singer novel. This book aside, Matthew Iden is the best
new author I’d found this year.
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