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Loading... Ghostman (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) (original 2013; edition 2013)by Roger Hobbs (Author)
Work InformationGhostman by Roger Hobbs (2013)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. "Ghostman", by Roger Hobbs, was a slightly different crime novel, told through the eyes of a high-end thief rather than through the eyes of the crime fighter. The heists described in the book were elaborately planned, reminiscent of the "Oceans 11" casino robbery movie from 1960 and its 2001 remake. The protagonist, the "ghostman", is something of a clever make-up specialist, who seems able to assume a variety of different identities. In order to pay a debt to a powerful criminal associate from the past, he's tasked with recovering money stolen from an Atlantic City casino, but only has two days to complete the task until the money is destroyed by its protective devices. In trying to accomplish this task, he has to keep the police, the FBI, and an opposing crime boss and his gang at bay. Being threatened by the two opposing criminal bosses, he has to choose to side with the lesser of the two evils and avoid getting killed or arrested. The book moves along quickly, and I enjoyed the twist of a "bad guy" being the main character, and also enjoyed the Atlantic City tie-in, since I'm personally familiar with the city and area. Bad guy (jugmarker) Marcus calls in a debt owed to him by ghostman, Jack White, when the theft of Federal Reserve money to a casino goes horribly wrong. Jack flies into Atlantic City on Marcus's jet, and immediately flagged by the FBI; however, he manages to stay out of their clutches, while trying to locate the money and avoid the maniacal Wolf, another baddie. There was plenty of action, but I did not care for the switching timeline to the Malaysian job that failed (creating Jack's debt to Marcus) or Jack's mysterious personality as a cypher, feeling the author skimped on most details, other than his mentor. no reviews | add a review
AwardsNotable Lists
"Stunningly dark, hugely intelligent and thoroughly addictive, Ghostman announces the arrival of an exciting and highly distinctive novelist. When a casino robbery in Atlantic City goes horribly awry, the man who orchestrated it is obliged to call in a favor from someone who's occasionally called Jack. While it's doubtful that anyone knows his actual name or anything at all about his true identity, or even if he's still alive, he's in his mid-thirties and lives completely off the grid, a criminal's criminal who does entirely as he pleases and is almost impossible to get in touch with. But within hours a private jet is flying this exceptionally experienced fixer and cleaner-upper from Seattle to New Jersey and right into a spectacular mess: one heister dead in the parking lot, another winged but on the run, the shooter a complete mystery, the $1.2 million in freshly printed bills god knows where and the FBI already waiting for Jack at the airport, to be joined shortly by other extremely interested and elusive parties. He has only forty-eight hours until the twice-stolen cash literally explodes, taking with it the wider, byzantine ambitions behind the theft. To contend with all this will require every gram of his skill, ingenuity and self-protective instincts, especially when offense and defense soon become meaningless terms. And as he maneuvers these exceedingly slippery slopes, he relives the botched bank robbery in Kuala Lumpur five years earlier that has now landed him this unwanted new assignment. From its riveting opening pages, Ghostman effortlessly pulls the reader into Jack's refined and peculiar world--and the sophisticated shadowboxing grows ever more intense as he moves, hour by hour, toward a constantly reimprovised solution. With a quicksilver plot, gripping prose and masterly expertise, Roger Hobbs has given us a novel that will immediately place him in the company of our most esteemed crime writers."-- Provided by publisher. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Minor local nit-pick: one of the super bad guys in the book shares a name with a mild mannered Philly sportswriter. That was a bit of a disconnect for me but only a tiny thing. ( )