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Loading... Shady Crossby James Hankins
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) cjordan916 | Dec 30, 2022 |   ) Brian-B | Nov 30, 2022 | The story is told from the point of view of Stokes, an habitual criminal with little empathy and less conscience, who blames the fact that, in his thirties, he has no family, no friends and no money, not on his own weak character and poor judgement, but on the fact that he's just never caught a break. This is not a world view I'm used to living with. I felt as comfortable as if I'd just put on a shirt drenched in someone-else's sweat. Yet I kept reading. Why? Because of the "what will he do?" dilemma that baits the hook this book reeled me in with. Stokes finally gets a break. He has a dead man's backpack in his hands with $35o,ooo in it, that he can just walk away with and no one will ever know. Then a phone in the backpack rings . He answers it and little girl says, “Daddy? Are you coming to get me? They say if you give them money they’ll let you take me home.” I found that I really wanted to know what a man like him would do in those circumstances. "Shady Cross" has three things going for it that kept me hooked: constant tension that is delivered at an almost exhausting pace and intensity; a plot with so many unexpected turns and frustrations that you feel you have to keep reading so you can find out how it all works out; and the character of Stokes a fundamentally flawed man who is quite hard to like and almost impossible to trust but who I still found myself rooting for from time to time. The audiobook version of "Shady Cross" is nine hours and ten minutes long. I gulped it down in two sessions and wished I'd had the time to read it without stopping. There are two things I didn't like about "Shady Cross" The main one is that I could never quite buy Stoke's motivation for continuing to try to do the right thing, no matter how ineptly, rather than looking after his own interests. It's not that this wasn't explained, it's just that I didn't believe the explanation. The second thing is related to first thing and it's the way Stokes feels about how everything works out. I bought what happened in the end, just not how Stokes felt about it. Still, it's a fun way to spend a few hours and it does what thriller should do: keeps you guessing and keeps you turning the pages. Bon Shaw does a great job narrating "Shady Cross" and keeping me inside Stokes' unpleasant head. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample. https://soundcloud.com/brilliance-audio/shady-cross-by-james-hankins (  ) MikeFinnFiction | May 16, 2020 | Shady Cross has an interesting premise. A low-time criminal is in a car crash and happens upon a big bag with cash. He's about to celebrate his luck when the phone in the bag starts ringing and he speaks to a young girl, whom he's never met, who is abducted. Clearly, the bag contains her ransom. Suddenly overtaken by a conscience he decides to deliver the ransom. This, however, turns out not to be easy. It had a very masculine feel to it. The main characters kept steering into trouble and at some point, as everything was following up in rapid succession I started to loose my interested. This because it was getting more and more unrealistic, almost by the page. Just deliver the ransom already! Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ( ) Floratina | Dec 7, 2019 | Stokes is a small time criminal. He is not above taking something that isn't his and tends to keep his eye out for any opportunity to to make a little money. When he is involved in an accident that takes another man's life and finds a bag full of money, he thinks that he has finally found his big payday. Then the phone in the bag rings and everything changes. When he realizes that the money in that bag was meant to save a little girl's life, he feels compelled to do the right thing and save the girl. This book had a lot of things going for it. I love that the story features an antihero. It was kind of fun to see a character with questionable morals work so hard to save someone he has never met. The story was exciting with one roadblock blocking his path after another. There were a few surprises along the way as well. I didn't love all aspects of the book. I started to tire of all of the problems that Stokes kept running into. It seemed that no matter what he tried thing would go wrong. It became a bit predictable and the excitement of the story suffered as a result. I also never really connected with the characters. I didn't dislike him but I didn't like him either. I never fully believed that he would really risk so much to save the girl. This is the first time that I have listened to Bon Shaw narrated a story and I really enjoyed his performance. He handled all of the voice really well and the dialogue in the story was flawless. The cast of character in this story really cover a wide range including men, woman, older adults, and children and he did a great job with all of them. I would not hesitate to listen to his work again in the future. I would recommend this book to fast paces mystery fans. This was an enjoyable listen that was a little different than the norm. This was the first time that I have read James Hankins work but I do plan to read more in the future. ( ) Carolesrandomlife | Aug 8, 2017 |
 “This outstanding crime thriller from Hankins (Brothers and Bones) grabs the reader by the scruff of the neck and never lets go. When second-rate crook Stokes ransacks a wrecked car that’s run off a country road near Shady Cross, Ind., he discovers that the dead driver had a knapsack stuffed with $350,000; the bad news is that Stokes also finds a ringing cell phone that announces the money was ransom for the dead man’s little daughter. His first impulse is to ditch the phone and run with the cash. Instead, Stokes plays along with the kidnappers over the phone, trying to figure out their plan and save the child. He has no experience as a hero, and the new role forces him into situations that are deadly dangerous and grotesquely hilarious—while the kidnappers keep calling every hour to threaten the girl. Hankins skillfully keeps the story from going warm and fuzzy as Stokes gropes toward redemption.”  “Antihero is too kind a term for Stokes. He’s an ex-con; he robs the fellow on the next bar stool. He abandoned a wife and daughter because they were too much trouble. His last break-in may have left the householder dead. And he carries this fine, offbeat novel. The author’s skill in bringing this off is magical, since Stokes is not an engaging rogue—though his droll humor is evident—and he’s not a heel with a heart of gold like those Bogart characters. When he comes upon a backpack loaded with cash and learns it’s to ransom a little girl who’s being tortured, his immediate reaction is to blow town with the money, the hell with the kid. Fate intervenes, and Stokes is off on a twisty plot that brings him up against people—some outwardly splendid—who could give him lessons in baseness. As the narrative winds to its hurtful conclusion, we understand that by trying to rescue the girl, Stokes rescues himself. We also know we’ve read a novel crammed with crackling dialogue and characters who are, unfortunately, all too true to life.”
In one hand, small-time crook Stokes holds a backpack stuffed with someone else's money--three hundred and fifty thousand dollars of it.In the other hand, Stokes has a cell phone, which he found with the money. On the line, a little girl he doesn't know asks, "Daddy? Are you coming to get me? They say if you give them the money they'll let you take me home."From bestselling author James Hankins comes a wrenching story of an unscrupulous man torn between his survival instincts and the plight of a true innocent. Faced with the choice, Stokes discovers his conscience might not be as corroded as he thought. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyRatingAverage: (3.85)
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