…well, it’s still a book but I have no doubt the movie is on the way.
This is the most kick-ass crime thriller I have run into since I first met Jack Reacher digging swimming pools in Key West!!
Finished it in one sitting and to hell with mowing the lawn, and started in again the following morning to re-read it and to hell with the lawn again.
‘Babe’ Crucci, wise-guy hitman just out of his second stretch at San Quentin, for a Manslaughter plea deal that should have been Murder 1 and a shot of Jesus juice, reunites with his long estranged son Leo, a robbery-homicide detective working out of Rampart Division of the LAPD. Leo wants nothing to do with his old (thug) man, but needs his help to smooth over some overdue mob gambling debts…
And three.. two.., one…. BLASTOFF!!! This Dashiell Hammett/Raymond Chandler/Robert B Parker inspired noir takes off like one of Elon Musk’s Falcon 9s and accelerates up – up and away. I see Russell Crowe as ‘Babe’, maybe Leo himself as Leo (and I can’t wait) and I need to give my Hollywood cousin a heads up in case it hasn’t been optioned yet. God forbid Tom Cruise gets his hands on it.
The casting director is gonna have a lot of fun filling out the unbelievably rich cast of cops, robbers, call-girls and crack-whores, hot babes and hitmen, Italian, Irish, Cambodian mobsters, murder victims and perpetrators, wandering wives and vengeful hubbies and a father – son relationship that is… how shall I put this? …somewhat dysfunctional.
Mr. McClure has crafted a masterpiece of the genre; taut prose. tense and convoluted plot (with -as far as I could see – only a single very minor hole) and with heaps of horror, surprise and sudden belly-laugh, very non-PC humour (I am still sniggering about the warm and grisly delights of the Ukrainian Witness Protection Programme). Mr. McClure, even got the gun stuff right.
This book absolutely has it all, from hot sex to hotter homicide, to innovative ways of dealing with family discord of various kinds. I could not put it down (or more accurately could not stop flicking pages on my android reader).
If you read this Mr. McClure, your wife is right, stuff the law practice and get back to that keyboard, I need to find out whether Babe and Leo ever get to that Dodger’s game.
I am enjoying it even more the second time round – now the character traits of the labyrinthine cast have become clear since I know where it is going.
In case I haven’t made myself clear, this is one not-to-be-missed helluva good yarn. I sincerely hope there is a follow-up in the works.
Veritas Extrinsecus Est 