Cold Barrel Zero by Matthew Quirk

Suppose a man you respected and served under and also saved while serving as a medic is being touted as an operative gone rogue, now with a WMD and planning to carry out his self-imposed mission within the US. The FBI fills you in on what your former commander has done, but you remain both skeptical and unsure; it's been over 10 years so maybe he has changed after so many years of black operations.  

Then your former commander finds and grabs you (and your girlfriend). His side of the story is remarkably different. Help him or turn him in? 

Thomas Byrne was the Navy corpsman with Ranger skills. He is assigned to Hayes' group that conducts the blackest of black operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran . . . most anywhere. One ambush nearly killed Hayes had it not been for Byrne's two unique skill sets.

After being appropriately medaled for heroism, Byrne up and quits once he got accepted to medical school. Now he is a contract ER doc, going from hospital to hospital as he is needed. His most recent gig is in southern California. While in California, the personnel office that houses files on all operatives regardless of which of the alphabet services these folks serve is burglarized. All their personal info is out there, somewhere.

The FBI and an Army officer named Riggs seek out Byrne for information on Hayes; Byrne is the only one who served under Hayes that is unaccounted for. They tell him Hayes has acquired a WMD, and it's now missing, last seen in California. Riggs is convinced that Hayes has it.

Byrne pleads his innocence, but while he is trying to reconcile his past with Hayes' present, he and his girlfriend are snatched. Now Hayes, a guru at subtle manipulation, weaves his version of what's going on.

It all dates back to a mission in Afghanistan that went south resulting in the mass execution of friendly villagers. An event that hardened the commitment of future jihadi's. Byrne has to decide whose story to believe, Hayes or Riggs.

This is Quirk's third book; the other two were reasonably received by the boys here at MRB.  But I think I'd be safe in saying that this tale of conflicting loyalties far exceeds his earlier two efforts. In this book, Quirk delivers a frantic chase across airports, freeways, warehouses, safe houses, isolated coastal California coves, more freeways, a black naval vessel.  For thriller fans, Quirk delivers in spades. A breakneck pace with confrontations on nearly every page. Tough to put this one down, trust me.

Available April 30, 2016

ECD

Tommy Red by Charlie Stella

The modern mob is a shell of its former existence. La Cosa Nostra is now La Cosa Freak Show. Used to be if a wiseguy got convicted, he did his time in silence. Now, they all want to cut a deal and stay out of prison. Dominick Farase has dirt on the Cirelli family and manages to work a deal to get into WitSec that places him on an island just off the coast of New Hampshire.

NYPD organized crime cop Quinlan King travels to New England with his artsy wife to scope out the place where she will do some residential art course, stumbles across Farase and snaps a few shots on his phone. First stop when he returns? Why, retired family capo Gasper Cirelli, of course. The word gets passed to the son, Frank  and the wheels are set in motion for a hit reaching out to James ‘Doc’ Adamo to get it done.

Red-haired ‘Mick’ Tommy Dalton chose his own path and knows what probably awaits him. He is not likely to die in bed of old age. He married a stripper, fathered 3 daughters, then was divorced by his wife when she finally realized that Tommy was a bit more than just a thief. Being of Irish descent, he was unable to become a made man within any NY crime family so he went freelance specializing in contract killing. Pretty good at it and well paid to boot.

But right now, Tommy has bigger problems on his hands. Seems his ex decided that his oldest daughter (Alysha, NYU Pre-Vet student) deserves to know just who her father really is by telling her that Tommy is a murderer. The ex is pissed off because her newest man, a lawyer with political aspirations, found out Tommy wasn’t on the up and up and dumped her because Tommy’s history would kill any chance at holding public office; the press finds out everything.

‘Doc’ Adamo and Tommy are longtime friends and Doc acts as the middle man between the Cirelli family and Tommy. The hit goes down. Piece of cake.

But La Cosa Freak Show these days is more about CYA than pure retribution so the Cirelli’s have the bright idea that all loose ends need to be tied up. Hits are ordered on Doc, Tommy, Detective King, and lord knows who else.

Not all goes as planned. Doc survives the attack and manages to take out one of the hitters. A guy was tasked with following and killing Tommy on the island; bad idea. The FBI gets involved (they don’t like protected witnesses getting whacked), lower level wiseguys hoping to move up don’t have quite the talent of the old days. And going after Alysha in order to leverage Tommy wasn’t a bright move.

Dalton is a character from a short story Stella wrote for one of the terrific series of ‘Noir’ books, this one was Baltimore Noir (where I first stumbled across Stella). I once read where Stella said Tommy was one of his favorite characters and really wanted to pen a book with Tommy as the central character.

Holy crap. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Why the hell isn’t Stella on every mystery lover’s must-read list. All those supermarket bestsellers are all about marketing, certainly not about story, characters, dialogue, tone, setting, and (fictional) reality. This taut, tightly presented story of misplaced loyalties and retribution is nicely tied up in a fast-paced tale that, once you get used to the rhythm of the dialogue, just begs you to turn the next page.

To me, the best crime and noir novels absolutely require dialogue that both leaps off the page and drills under your fingernails. Dashiell Hammett, George V. Higgins, George Pelacanos come to mind. Higgins was a Boston lawyer in the DA’s office so he saw the underbelly of crime up close. Pelacanos (one of the original writers for The Wire) writes about DC crime and gets his feel for the voice of the street by volunteering with the DC Metro Juvenile division counseling kids to get out of the life. Stella grew up in the neighborhood and knows of many of the people who are/were the source material for the movie Goodfellas. And his cover blurb says that was ‘a former window washer, word processor, and knockaround guy’ (apply your own definition). While the plotline may be a figment of Stella’s imagination, the interaction between and amongst the characters is the absolutely the real deal.

One hallmark of Stella’s books is a mostly innocent good guy caught in the middle who must find a way out. Tommy Red doesn’t really have that ‘good guy’ who now has to scramble. But true to form, Stella skillfully makes a contract killer into a sympathetic figure worthy of us pulling for. Let’s hope we haven’t heard the last of Tommy Dalton.  

Available from Stark House April, 2016.

Off the Grid by C.J. Box

In book number sixteen of his Joe Pickett, Wyoming game warden series, C.J. Box writes more of a thriller than a mystery and incorporates the antics of Nate Romananski, a kind of anarchist outlaw into the plot.  Nate is living in hiding (off the grid) on a friend’s Wyoming ranch with his latest girlfriend when he has a dream of terrorists in three white pickup trucks attacking him in the desert.  There to defend him is his old pal, Joe Pickett.  Nate doesn’t understand the dream or even know what desert he is in and hasn’t seen Joe in some time.  The next day some men from an unknown government agency find Nate and offer him a chance to expunge his legal record.  All he has to do is go to the Red Desert in south central Wyoming and locate a Saudi born person of interest, thought to be planning an attack against the United States.  Iggy, the perpetrator, is a known falconer and Nate can use his falcons as cover for his presence there.  Nate has no interest is cooperating with the feds but he knows his girlfriend who has gone to Louisiana to visit her mother will be in danger if he denies his services.

Meanwhile, Joe Picket is dealing with a rogue grizzly bear problem.  Grizzly bear interactions with humans have become more common in Wyoming and the State has attached GPS collars to a few grizzlies to monitor their mobility.  Interestingly they have found a grizzly bear can travel as much as two thousand miles in a season and has been observed surveilling some hunters without them knowing it.  Now one of the bears has attacked and killed a hunter and Joe has to track him down.

But just as Joe is getting organized, the Governor calls on Joe for a mission of his own.  Governor Rulon has a deal with Joe to make himself available for the occasional special assignment.  In this case, Governor Rulon has gotten wind of the deal Nate Rowananski has made with the feds and wants Joe to go to the Red Desert, find Nate, and report the nature of the activity in the desert.  The Wyoming governor has ongoing jurisdictional battles with all Federal agencies.

Coincidently, the grizzly Joe was tracking appears to be headed to the Red Desert as well.  And even more coincidently, Joe’s daughter Sheridan happens to be camping in the Red Desert this very weekend with her college roommate.  Middle Eastern terrorists, a killer grizzly bear, Nate Romananski, and Joe Pickett all in the largely uninhabited Wyoming Red Desert at the same time… this can’t end peaceably… and it doesn’t.

Off the Grid is C.J. Box’s best yet.  The combination of Nate who always finds trouble and Joe who always has trouble finding him, makes for more adventure, action, and suspense than most Joe Pickett novels.  I had the privilege of hearing the author talk last week at a library book signing event.  His latest news is that he has cancelled the project with Sundance Productions to turn his Joe Pickett series into film.  He decided they were changing his Joe character too much so as Box put it, "I fired Robert Redford." 

The Wrecking Crew by Taylor Zajonc

Jonah Blackwell is mired in a Moroccan prison for being a part of an illegal salvage job off the country’s coast. While being an accomplish saturation diver, he hasn’t the best rep because it turns out his father was a CIA station chief who was turned by the other side.

 

The prison’s new doc pulls Jonah out of a fight and stitches him up, offering him an out. The doc, Hassan Nassiri, will secret him out to his freedom if Jonah will help him find his mother. She was a marine biologist studying a particularly problematic red tide off the coast of Somalia when her plane was shot down by pirates. Her entire research program now rests at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Hassan wants Jonah to find the plane and pull out her data. Hassan figures this is the best way to honor her memory.

Prison or a deep dive and freedom? Easy choice. Jonah is quite resilient and devises a plan to get to the Somali coast, but to do so will require stealing one of the world’s fastest yacht’s so they can outrun any pursuit, then bluff their way down the Suez and then acquire the needed diving gear. Simple.

Charles Bettencort, CEO of Bettencorps, is the world’s primero entrepreneur. He’s built an island business utopia on a series of decommissioned oil platforms and anchored them in the Indian Ocean; set up his own country essentially free off nasty impediments to business like laws, etc.  Doing some good and some underhanded things, too.

But, as with any plan, the first fog of battle changes everything. For example, the yacht’s engineer is inboard, so she ends up being kidnapped and willing helps out. They outrun surface pursuit. Bettencort learns of this mission and sends his own security forces to stop Hassan and Jonah. Even has a sub, which Jonah rams with his stolen ship, enters and kills most everyone. One injured sub pilot, a Russian, is saved by Hassan and he to goes along willingly with the plan.

Then . . . . and then . . . and then . . . . This book is one unlikely scenario after another that Hassan and Jonah manage to work their way around. They meet a friendly Somali pirate, are protected by a Somali family, helped by a woman captured a couple years earlier by other pirates, it goes on and on. OK. Maybe Clive Cussler has carved out a lucrative niche with fantastical marine adventures, but this one just seemed way, way over the top. Far too many convenient circumstances, unlikely turns of events, and that friendly pirate. Good grief.

East Coast Don

p.s. This should not be confused with the excellent documentary of the same name (it's on NetFlix). Think all the bands and singers from LA in the 50s and 60s played their own instruments on their records. Nay, Nay. The studio musicians of the time were nicknamed The Wrecking Crew. The Beach Boys? All those other beach music groups? Sonny and Cher? The girl groups? They all sang, but the music was by The Wrecking Crew. Fans of music of the 60s will find this documentary highly entertaining.

Old Money by Bobby Cole

We’ve reviewed a few authors whose main character is a state game warden. Time to add another. This time it’s Mississippi.

Jake Crosby gave up the stock broker life to return to his native Mississippi to become a game warden. Newly hired (via some back room arm twisting by a Federal judge), Jake is trying to prove himself worthy to his partner, the long-time warden (a stereotypical Mississippi good old boy) Virgil Fain. A career state employee who never puts in one minute over his required 40hr/week.

Bronson Bolivar up and died in prison. Always one to look for an easy buck, he looked a little too hard a few times and got put away. No wife. His latest wife was a gypsy who just took off one day. Bronson’s only marginally (and legally) successful business was installing and servicing septic tanks. Apparently, one of his less than legal ventures paid off and it was rumored he had stashed a couple million dollars somewhere on his (1000 acre) property. But his twin children, Chance (muscle-bound doofus) and Chase (uppity white trash chick) were never told about the money’s whereabouts nor were they able to find it. When Bronson’s cellmate is paroled, they figure this guy must have some information.

Jake’s supporter on the federal bench, Judge Ransom Rothbone is nearing retirement, but asks Jake to keep an eye on the Bolivar twins. Now that daddy is dead, they might start getting antsy about the hidden money and go ballistic if the money isn’t found. Plus, the Judge’s wife is in need of a kidney transplant, but judges are that well paid, so he is looking for a way to come up with a lot of money. You can see where this is heading.

So while their daddy’s cellmate may well know something about the money, he ain’t talking, hoping to grab it all for himself. Chase Bolivar dreams up an idea to make some quick cash. Turns out that the explorer DeSoto went through their part of the state. She buys a cheap knockoff of a Spanish explorer’s helmet on eBay, tells the cellmate about it hoping he’ll tell a contact in New Orleans, one Fabian Antoinette (under Federal surveillance for, among other things, counterfeiting) to act as a middleman. A real helmet should fetch $5 million.

When the exchange is made, Mississippi game wardens, state and local police, and the feds all descend leading to one wild chase (no pun intended) through the Mississippi backwoods.

A decent story, well told by Cole. Crosby is easy to like as he tries to learn his way around becoming a game warden. Maybe not as experienced or slick as CJ Box’s Joe Pickett, I do see Cole developing Crosby into, if not a quality warden, then a competent, but slightly confused/naïve warden. Definitely worth another look. This is the 3rd in the series.

East Coast Don