Norman Green

Fat Tommy and Stoney are grey people, existing on the fringes of the law, constantly looking for a new angle, a new scam. They run a junkyard on Troutman Street, a neighborhood in decline. Troutman Street, unnoticed by most, is populated by drug addicts and dealers, prostitues and pimps. As the two scrape and scratch for a buck, people strat turning up dead near their junkyard.

This book caught me with my guard down. I expected to flip through it and give it away but the story and characters show more demanded more attention. Though not a typical adventure thriller or mystery, the story's slowly building tension made it read like one. Fat Tommy and Stoney, though not your typical heros, acted with an unusual but admirable style of honor, looking after their friends whilie playing the angles, taking care of their business interests while ensuring that no one but the truly bad guys are harmed. Troutman Street and all of its inhabitants provided a connecting thread while also serving as the largest character in the story.

This story was well written and well told, offering multiple layers in style and plot.

I suspect part of the novels success should be attributed to the authors wide and varied range of experience, as he boasts jobs as a truck driver, construction worker, factory rep, plant engineer, etc.

4 bones!!!! show less

Loved this book. Manny was found in a dumpster as a baby and raised in the system. His son is now in foster care. In addition, he a crook -- a good one. After a heist that netted a huge sum of unanticipated money, Manny takes off with his son and the Russian Mafia is after him. He is a bird lover and goes north to Maine where he meets many great down-to-earth folks who help him decide his future.

I read this book, & went right off and bought the next one. So there's that. Yes, the lead character--a Puerto Rican babe who kicks a**--is a wish-fulfillment fantasy. But she is likeable, & the plots are good.

Stoney gave up drinking, but it couldn't save his marriage. Leaving the big house in New Jersey to his wife and kids, he's living in the City still working the profitable, if not 100 percent legal, angles with his partner, "Fat Tommy Bagadonuts." Then, out of the blue, Stoney's teenage daughter shows up with a problem: an unwanted admirer who needs to be cooled down . . . or eliminated.

But the secrets Marisa's been keeping from her father like her night job as an exotic dancer can't compare show more with those being guarded by the mysterious and violent man who's stalking her: a dangerous enigma with no past and a made-up name. He does, however, have lots of money which makes him a very tempting mark for Stoney, Tommy, and their young streetwise "apprentice," Tuco. But people who look too closely into this guy's history have a habit of turning up dead. show less