This was a great story. Typical Ross Thomas - a complicated story with lots of humor mixed in. Interesting characters, but I had trouble remembering who some of them were. And sometimes it's hard to even know who are the good guys and bad guys.

As usual, a whole lot of cheating going on, with some musical money that nobody knows who will get it, or where it will go. ( )

My second Ross Thomas, the first I bought (in Cork city, Bridge Street Books as it was then, don't care what they changed it to, it's always Bridge Street Books to me, even if it was only called that for about a week.) My copy vanished, but I have now acquired a replacement, and it was so long ago and I was so callow and ignorant of the world that it's like reading a Ross Thomas book for the first time all over again! Yay for the callowness of youth!

The usual whipsmart plot sees a terrorist nabbed in London, leading to a counter-nabbing of the US president's brother by Libyans who were funding the terrorist and who think the original nabbers were the CIA. Except they weren't and nobody knows who has the terrorist. A quintessential shady Ross Thomas political fixer is summoned and a quintessential shady Ross Thomas troubleshooter - Chubb Dunjee, ex-congressman and so-called Mordida Man for his renown in getting people out of jams in Mexico - is enjoined to shoot the trouble. While he slides obliquely from London to Rome chasing connections and making plays the CIA, the terrorists holding the president's brother, a diplomat, a UN official, the Libyans and the actual original nabbers work their schemes and their plans and their plots. It's at once insanely complicated and smooth as a blade, like a good whiskey. Funny and dark and twisty and and sly and cruel. Quintessential Ross Thomas. ( )

Recently while waxing enthusiastic about my latest Ross Thomas acquisitions, I happened upon the perfect description for the kinds of books he wrote. They’re ‘caper’ novels. A mix of espionage, politics, the con, a heist; sometimes with an assassin and a pair of buddies driving the action. I can’t classify them as thrillers exactly since they’re too tactical; too precise. It’s not that they aren't thrilling, they are, but you see more deeply into the workings of the plot to have many doubts about what’s happening and therefore you don’t hang in suspense. Also not to say that Thomas laid everything bare; he didn’t, he only told you what he thought was good for you. Need to know. He’d tell you when he was ready.

In this one there isn’t a pair of buddies as good guys, but a pair as baddies. One is ex-CIA and one is ex-FBI and amusingly pseudonymed Mr. Arnold and Mr. Benedict. The Mordida Man (one who furnishes bribes) has to take them down to rescue the brother of the President of the United States. He’s got some help in the form of the usual rogues; some inside the law, some just outside. The plot is Byzantine even for Thomas, so those who can’t follow complex shenanigans need not apply. There is violence and Thomas isn’t afraid to kill off a character we’ve grown to like, but the violence isn’t gory or gratuitous. This isn’t torture porn.

Overall I think this one lacks the appeal of the buddy-driven stories because those relationships and the dialog; full of cryptic byplay and inside jokes, add heart to what without them is just a tiny bit hollow. In this one, Chubb Dunjee (the Mordida Man) is appealing, but he has no one to appeal to outside the reader so he has less opportunity to do so. Still a terrific book and I’ll say it again - everyone should read more Ross Thomas. ( )