KN Magazine: Reviews
Bluff by Michael Kardos / Review by Janet Brantley
BOOK OF THE DAY
Bluff, by Michael Kardos, gave me pause. Perhaps I should have seen it coming, the final act, but I didn’t. I was so stunned by it that it’s taken me a while to write this review. I had to distance myself from the action to realize just how good this book is, what a satisfying story Kardos has told.
Bluff is the first-person account of a gifted young magician who, at twenty-seven, seems to be going nowhere fast. After dazzling the world of magic a decade earlier, Natalie Webb is trying to convince herself and everyone else she’s ready for a comeback. Unfortunately, one of her simple card tricks goes awry and she is soon fending off a lawsuit that seems destined to drive her all the way into the poor house.
Enter Ellen—another woman who can do amazing things with her hands, this time at the poker table—with an offer Natalie can’t afford to refuse. Together the two women will infiltrate a high-stakes poker game and come away with a cool million dollars. All Natalie must do is turn her back on everything she loves about being a magician—and become a card cheat of the highest order.
Kardos does a masterful job of taking us inside two always intriguing worlds—magic in all its glamorous sleight-of-hand intrigue on the one hand, and extreme card playing on the other.
Speaking of hands, Natalie’s are magical. At least that’s what onlookers like her new attorney, Brock, believe. It’s hard for him to accept that she won’t tell him her card secrets, but when she carries out the explanation in her mind (“…learning the palms and passes and false shuffles…over many years and thousands of hours…until…you’d be fooled from a foot away”), we fully understand and are somewhat offended ourselves when he offers her $100 for the secret.
Bluff revolves around Natalie’s hands, from first page to last. What starts out as a seemingly innocent series of encounters become, over time, a dark and sinister look into a game of bluff gone terribly wrong. The denouement gives new meaning to the term “all in.” Surprisingly, Natalie perseveres, and though she’s not in the best of places at the end of the book, we are able to classify her as a survivor who can make the best of a bad (horrible, really) situation.
Kardos has left the door open for a sequel. If he writes one, I will certainly read it.
Last Stand by Mickey Spillane / Review by G. Robert Frazier
BOOK OF THE DAY
Mickey Spillane lives again! The grand master of mystery/pulp fiction and creator of private detective Mike Hammer may have passed away in 2006, but fans will be pleased to celebrate what would have been his 100th birthday on March 20 with a new novel. Billed as his final completed, unpublished novel, The Last Stand hits bookstores courtesy of Hard Case Crime.
While it’s not the gritty, in-your-face detective noir Spillane was famous for, and Hammer is absent from its pages, The Last Stand is nonetheless an entertaining adventure. The novel begins when pilot Joe Gillian’s BT-13A plane inexplicably loses power during an old-timer’s cross-country junket, forcing him to land in a desert somewhere in the U.S.
Joe’s arrival doesn’t go unnoticed, as Native American Sequoia Pete, abandoned by his own horse while searching for artifacts, comes upon him. Together, the men are forced to hike fifty miles back to Pete’s village where Joe hopes he’ll find help to get his plane airborne again. The men learn more about each other along the way: Pete’s not a very good Indian in the traditional sense, his sister has an engineering degree, and rattlesnake makes a decent dinner when there’s nothing else to be had.
But it’s the discovery of an unusual glass-like arrowhead of unknown substance and origin that provides the mystery, and impetus, for the remainder of the story. The shard draws the attention of both ruthless businessman Maxie Angelo and a cadre of federal agents, all of whom want the shard and any similar artifacts at any cost. Joe, meanwhile, has problems of his own as his attraction to Pete’s sister, Running Fox, draws the ire of jealous boyfriend Big Arms. All of the plotlines come to an action-packed finale filled with a wild airplane ride, explosions, guns, and, yes, rattlesnakes.
The adventure takes a lot of unexpected turns and Spillane weaves in a lot of threads in just a couple hundred pages, but that’s all part and parcel of Spillane’s brilliance. Combined with his trademark sharp dialogue and simple prose style, he keeps the tale moving at an entertaining clip.
For Spillane fans yearning for more traditional crime fare, The Last Stand includes the novelette “A Bullet for Satisfaction,” written early in his career. Reminiscent of early Hammer novels, Bullet involves a dishonored police detective gunning for justice against the mob and a corrupt police force.
Longtime Spillane collaborator and 2017 Killer Nashville guest of honor Max Allan Collins writes the introduction, recounting the origins of both stories for this centennial publication.
Robert Frazier is a freelance writer and former reporter and editor at several Middle Tennessee newspapers. He also reviews books for BookPage and BloggingforBooks and has served as a script reader for both the Austin Film Festival and Nashville Film Festival screenwriting competitions.
Cut You Down by Sam Wiebe / Review by Tim Suddeth
BOOK OF THE DAY
Cut You Down (Quercus, 2018) is the follow-up to the best-selling Invisible Dead and second in the Wakeland series by Sam Wiebe. It follows PI Dave Wakeland as he’s hired by a college professor to search for one of her students who she may or may not have feelings for. The girl’s disappearance becomes much more than he expected when he discovers that several million dollars have also gone missing and she was connected to a notorious family of criminals with a penchant for violence.
He is helped by the police officer and on-again-off-again lover, Sonia Drego, who has her own problems. She has doubts about her partner but doesn’t feel free to go to anyone. Wakeland is an ex-cop himself and any bridges to the force have been burned long ago.
Wakeland encounters more than his share of threats, beat-downs, and double crosses. Everyone around him has their own agendas. Although he’s alone and lost, he’ll never give up.
Set in Vancouver, British Columbia, where the author lives, the city becomes another character contributing the right amount of atmosphere and darkness. Wakeland harkens back to such private eyes as Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and other crime noir detectives by Dashielle Hammett, Raymond Chandler, et al, where the lines between good and bad were blurred at best, they never knew whom they could trust, and the criminals were as colorful as the good guys. With fast action and numerous twists, the reader will find themselves wanting to get to the next page.
Sam Wiebe has built a reputation for creating PIs who seem straight out of the pulp fiction classics. Cut You Down will only add to it. I’ m looking forward to seeing if Wakeland is able to get back on his feet or what kind of haymaker life throws at him next.
Yesterday's News by R.G. Belsky / Review by Sharon Marchisello
2019 Silver Falchion Candidate
BOOK OF THE DAY
The manuscript that became Yesterday's News (Oceanview Publishing) was the 2016 winner of Killer Nashville's Claymore Award. It is the first in a new series by R.G. Belsky featuring Clare Carlson, the driven, middle-aged news director for Channel 10.
Clare's career catapulted to stardom when, as a young newspaper reporter, she broke a story about the disappearance of eleven-year-old Lucy Devlin, a poster child who vanished on her way to school one day. Clare's heart-wrenching coverage of the family's tragedy captivated New Yorkers and won her a Pulitzer Prize.
Now, fifteen years later, with the mystery of Lucy's fate still unsolved, Anne Devlin, the grieving mother, thinks she has a new lead about the case, and she requests Clare's help to bring the story back to the front burner. Clare agrees.
Anne has received a puzzling email describing a girl who looked a lot like Lucy on the back of a motorcycle at a biker's convention in New Hampshire around the time of her disappearance. Clare learns that Patrick Devlin, Lucy's father (now estranged from Anne), once had ties with a motorcycle gang that attended the gathering. Claire also learns the bodies of six missing children were unearthed near that location a few years later when ground was broken for a shopping center.
The law enforcement official who supervised the investigation of the children's murders and identified the victims was Elliott Grayson, whose career took off after that event. He is now running for the U.S. Senate and both he and his opponent are willing to do almost anything to win. When Clare interviews Elliott about the case, he dodges her questions and romantic sparks fly.
The more Clare digs, the more lies she uncovers, and the more suspicions gnaw at her. No one is who they seem. And then the reader finds out Clare has a much closer connection to the Lucy Devlin case than she has ever revealed.
R.G. Belsky has an extensive journalism background, and his experience is evident in this fast-paced crime novel. Most recently, he was Managing Editor at NBC News. He resides in New York City and is the author of the award-winning Gil Malloy mystery series, including Blonde Ice, The Kennedy Connection, and Shooting for the Stars.
Sharon Marchisello (sharonmarchisello.com) is the author of Going Home, (Sunbury Press, 2014) a murder mystery inspired by her mother's battle with Alzheimer's. She earned a Masters in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California and is a member of the Atlanta Chapter of Sisters in Crime. She lives in Peachtree City, GA, with her husband and cat, does volunteer work for the Fayette Humane Society, and writes a blog about personal finance, Countdown to Financial Fitness https://sharonmarchisello.blogspot.com/.ns.
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