“Enshrined within the Colonial Spanish penal code is the Latin maxim talem qualem, which means you take your victim as you find him. American cops call it the eggshell skull rule. Slap someone with a delicate cranium, break it, and they’ll still charge you with murder. Talem qualem. Take your victim as you find him. In other words, be careful who you kill.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Guy Savage (AUG 18, 2009)

Special: Author Interview

Adrian McKinty’s latest thriller Fifty Grand begins in Wyoming on a frozen lake as a masked assailant forces a naked man at gunpoint to hammer a hole in the ice and then jump into the freezing water. Sobbing and begging for mercy, the man asks, “How did it come to this?” Then the novel goes back in time to answer that question.

Fifty Grand is narrated by female Cuban detective, Mercado. Mercado’s father defected to the U.S from Cuba years before, and while his abandoned wife is now a borderline nutjob, Mercado and her brother, Ricky never really got over the shock or the taint of their father’s defection. Now years later, Mercado learns that her father has been killed in a hit-and-run accident near Fairview, Colorado. Sketchy details that seep back to Cuba reveal that he was making a meager living as a ratcatcher. Apart from the ugly fact that Mercado’s father crawled off to die and that no one has been arrested for the crime, Mercado is also haunted by questions about her father’s desertion of his Cuban family. Since Mercado is not allowed to travel to the US from Cuba, she gets a week’s leave of absence supposedly to travel to Mexico City. But once there, Mercado takes an enormous risk and posing as an illegal immigrant, she pays her way across the border into America.

As planned, Mercado, who now goes by the name “Maria,” ends up in the wealthy ski resort of Fairview. It’s a nasty little tight-assed town owned by the corrupt Sheriff Briggs. Briggs has reason to believe that the Hollywood Scientologist crowd will make a vacation nest in Fairview and with Tom Cruise firmly in place as part of the advance landing crew, Briggs buys illegals to work the hotels and local businesses. He expects the illegals to be invisible, compliant and assist him–under threat of violence–in the upcoming economic boom.

Mercado begins working as a maid and in this capacity she sees the other side of Fairview: the cocaine, the prostitution, and the endless partying of the Hollywood crowds–those on their way up, and those on their way down. She has just a week to investigate her father’s death before she must return to Cuba, and if she fails to return, the consequences towards those she loves will be painful. Naturally since her father defected, there are those in Cuba who imagine Mercado will do the same if given the chance, but the detective sees America as some sort of racist assault course to be negotiated and barely tolerated until she discovers the truth about her father’s death.

Irish novelist McKinty isn’t that widely read in North America, but perhaps Fifty Grand will expand this author’s readership. Perhaps best known for his Forsthye trilogy (Dead I Well May Be, The Dead Yard, The Bloomsday Dead) McKinty is a versatile novelist who appears to have slipped easily into the skin of a female Cuban detective with the result that Mercado is a dynamic, believable character from page one. Fifty Grand is weakest when we question how an illegal alien smuggled in by a coyote and sold to local law enforcement, and now in America for less than a week has the time or the energy to sniff around the rich and famous of Fairview. The fact that Mercado is apparently so unsupervised and has oodles of free time defies credibility, and this implausibility nagged at me during parts of the novel. However, that complaint aside, for the most of the novel, McKinty’s narrative is so strong, that the skepticism of “Maria’s” work demands takes a back seat to the action.

The novel creates a portrait of a troubled Cuba, a country harnessed by the restraints placed by Castro and with conflicting forces waiting in the wings to carve up the prize when Castro dies. Mercado questions Cuba’s systems and yet when she arrives in the so-called paradise of America, she’s automatically placed at the bottom of the totem pole, and is treated like trash by the wealthy whose homes she cleans. As a result, both worlds are seen as unpleasant places–poverty-stricken Cuba in limbo until Castro dies, and America with its vastly contrasting worlds of the filthy rich and the dirt poor who serve them. Fifty Grand’s strength is in its excellent, clever structure, and consequently, the novel is much more intense than many thrillers I’ve read this year. McKinty is a bold writer who isn’t afraid of handing out advance plot information as a means to tease us into the story.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 17 readers
PUBLISHER:	Henry Holt and Co. (April 28, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Adrian McKinty
EXTRAS:	Excerpt MostlyFiction interview with Adrian McKinty
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read a review of Dead I May Well Be And other Cuban Detective novels: Comrades in Miami by Jose Latour Havana Red by Leonard Padura Havana Lunar by Robert Arellano

Bibliography:

• Orange Rhymes With Everything (1997)
• Hidden River (2004)
• Fifty Grand (2009)
• Falling Glass (2011)

Dead Trilogy:

• Dead I Well May Be (2003)
• The Dead Yard (2006)
• Bloomsday Dead (2007)

“Later that evening on the ride back on the IRT, when I thought wrongly, that the night was all over and done with, I replayed everything that happened. The whole house of horrors. Bridget cleaning the blood off my shirt, the food stop, the car ride, and most of all the feathers over Shovel. I wasn’t a sadist. I wasn’t enjoying it. But I wanted to be sure I had it all. I needed to know that I was certain of what I was doing. I wasn’t just being carried away by youth and emotion. Things were happening and I was part of them. But also occasionally I was stopping, analyzing events and saying to myself that it was all ok by me. And it was ok, too. Why? I don’t know. That’s another question entirely.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Guy Savage (AUG 18, 2009)

Special: Author Interview

I recently finished Adrian McKinty’s latest novel, Fifty Grand–the story of a Cuban female cop who goes to Colorado to discover the truth behind the hit-and-run death of her defector father. This was the first McKinty novel for me, and I was really impressed with the author’s style. Thrillers are a dime a dozen these days, and it’s no easy task to separate substance from crap, but what I particularly liked about Fifty Grand was the novel’s structure. Told in another fashion, without the clever structuring, Fifty Grand would have been an entirely different read. And I’ll have to admit I thought it was a ballsy move for an Irish novelist to write a story through the eyes of a female Cuban detective.

And so, after discovering a copy of Dead I May Well Be languishing unread on my bookshelf, I picked up this earlier McKinty novel wondering if the same clever use of structure would appear and whether or not McKinty is as good a storyteller as Fifty Grand implied….

Dead I May Well Be is the first novel in the Michael Forsythe trilogy, and the other two titles are The Dead Yard & The Bloomsday Dead. Dead I May Well Be begins in Ireland in the aftermath of an IRA bombing. For nineteen-year-old unemployed Forsythe, recently booted out of the British army, prospects don’t look good, but he manages to unexpectedly pick up a few pounds for clearing up the debris left from the bombing and even gets his mug in the paper as he removes the “Belfast Confetti.” With money in his pocket, Forsythe buys a record and some chocolate, and life looks good for a few hours until he’s confronted by a drone from the Department of Health and Social Security for unemployment benefit fraud. With unemployment benefit cut off, Forsythe has no choice but to go to America to work for thug Darkey White.

The novel then picks up in New York some months later with Forsythe living in a depressing, airless, vermin-infested hole, and working as an enforcer for Darkey’s many illegal business interests. One night, on a revenge spree with a couple of other hoods, Forsythe’s tough, stone-cold delivery of a bloody “Belfast six-pack,” is followed nonchalantly with a Big Mac meal. Forsythe’s cool, efficient performance makes his future in Darkey’s organization look secure, but then that isn’t taking into account that Forsythe is banging Darkey’s young girlfriend, Bridget on the sly.

The meaning of the title Dead I May Well Be becomes apparent as the story develops, but I’m not going to give away any more of this superb novel’s plot. This is an edge-of-your-seat, incredibly well-structured book that takes the reader from the slums and turf wars of New York to the savage depths of a Mexican prison. And just as you think that what happens to Forsythe can’t get worse, it does.

Gripping, explosive and fascinating, Dead I May Well Be is crime fiction at its dark best with a protagonist who doesn’t kill for thrills, but who thirsts for revenge against those who betrayed him. The novel’s strength comes in its intense character study of Forsythe. At the beginning of the novel, he could be any unemployed punk looking to game the system, and even in New York, as the new man on the team, the low man on the totem pole, he doesn’t exactly shine as anything special. The other hoods severely underestimate Forsythe and he gets little respect and is even the butt of a few jokes. A criminal Everyman, Forsythe is intelligent, keeps a cool head, and is incredibly patient, but like many men, he’s led astray by a pair of high heels. The novel’s structure fuels the story’s intensity, and unlike other writers who conceal crucial plot elements that are then lobbed at the reader, McKinty is a confidant, bold writer who’s comfortable with seeding the action with information about upcoming plot developments. With more than a nod to fate, Forsythe during crucial moments takes stock of how he could have played his hand differently:

“If I hadn’t done that, things would have turned out differently. I would have spent the night with her. What happened the next morning wouldn’t have happened. There would have been no Mexico, there would have been no death. There would have been just me and this beautiful girl and a different narrative, a better one.”

In Forsythe’s world there are no simple dividing lines of good vs. evil–just culpability, shades of expedient gray, and memories expiated only by the bloodiest revenge.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 27 readers
PUBLISHER:	Scribner (October 14, 2003)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Adrian McKinty
EXTRAS:	Google Books Excerpt MostlyFiction interview with Adrian McKinty
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read a review of Fifty Grand Other similar good books: Vanilla Ride by Joe R. Lansdale Get Real by Donald E. Westlake

Bibliography:

• Orange Rhymes With Everything (1997)
• Hidden River (2004)
• Fifty Grand (2009)
• Falling Glass (2011)

Dead Trilogy:

• Dead I Well May Be (2003)
• The Dead Yard (2006)
• Bloomsday Dead (2007)