The Ethical Assassin / by David Liss

Needing money for college, 17-year-old Floridian Lem Altick hits the road the summer after high school as a door to door salesman of encyclopedias. It's a scammy business, a ruse run by con artists who prey on the rural poor by getting them to think they're making an "educational investment" for their underpriveleged children. And though Lem is actually good at his job, a surprise to everyone including him, he disapproves of the predatory nature of what he does. In the midst of making a pitch one afternoon, he witnesses the cold-blooded murder of his customers, a young couple in a trailer home, by a stranger not much older than Lem who appears out of nowhere. The assassin, later introduced as Melford Kean, agrees to spare Lem's life in return for his continuing silence. He assures Lem that the deaths were no great loss ("These people had it coming."). It's not like he has much choice; Kean forced Lem to put his prints are on the murder weapon and there was at least one witness who saw him enter the trailer at the time of the killing. Going back to his job still wide-eyed with shock, Lem tries to forget about it all only to run in to Kean later that same day, maybe a coincidence but probably not. Before he knows it, Lem's downtrodden gig of peddling overpriced, outdated encyclopedias merges with a strangely alluring world of professional killing and exploitation as his life, up to now a disappointment, is never the same again.

Liss, a scholar of mostly 17th and 18th British literature and author of several successful historical novels, pens a worthy standalone in this book about an assassin with a hyped-up Machiavellian view of life and a casually manipulative way of getting things done. The story meanders around from one plot element to another--Lem and Kean's meeting, corrupt sherriff/mayor involved in the investigation and the overarching criminal underground which infiltrates everything--but the pacing is solid and the author's characterization really shines at depicting his supporting cast, a myriad of sordid types in a world of shady salesmanship, drug rings and sleazy small town cops. Liss, a San Antonio resident, might not quite be up to the level of a Carl Hiaasen or Elmore Leonard but he's not far off. Even with his other work not really in the same vein, or even the same genre, The Ethical Assassin catches on as an entertaining read, unique really in its setup with a normal, down-on-his-luck guy confronted by some quirky, real-world circumstances and an enigmatic villain/hero he can't get away from. (MYS LISS)

Gone Til' November: A Novel / by Wallace Stroby

New Jersey native Wallace Stroby's life shares much in common with that of notorious HBO villain Tony Soprano, or more accurately, that of the actor who plays him, James Gandolfini. It's one reason why many of his books cover themes associated with the infamous TV capo and those within the criminal element who are like him. Born in Long Branch, a town along the Jersey Shore, Stroby grew familiar with many of the archetype ruffians represented in his thrillers right up until he graduated from Rutgers (Gandolfini's alma mater). From there he worked as a reporter and editor for the Newark based Star-Ledger newspaper, a publication covering the greater part of New Jersey, until his novels broke it big in the mid-2000's. 2010's Gone Til' November is about a New Jersey contract killer who travels to Florida only to be confronted by sheriff's deputy Sara Cross, a cop and woman with her own problems.

Hopedale, FL sheriff's deputy Sara Cross' has a lot of problems. She's divorced to a deadbeat who won't pay his alimony, she gets migraines frequently, she's prone to bad relationships--she still has issues about her ex-boyfriend, also a sheriff's deputy on the same force--and her 6-year-old son's got leukemia. Still, Sara's never been one to back down from a confrontation, especially if it involves a questionable situation like the one her current case involves. Having stumbled onto the scene of a roadside shooting in an isolated, swampy portion of town, Sara immediately senses something's not quite right. She finds Billy Flynn (her former partner and ex) just after he's shot a twenty-two-year-old black man during a routine traffic stop. He claims it was self-defense, initiated when an altercation broke out after Billy asked to see inside the trunk which, upon examination, does contain a hefty assortment of illegal firearms. But Sara isn't so sure about Billy's story and her policing instincts instantly start to perk up as she begins investigating.

Meanwhile, New Jersey crime boss Mikey-Mike has a major drug deal about to go through down in Florida and doesn't want anything funny to happen. So he sends his man Morgan, an over-the-hill contract killer looking for one last paycheck, to "seal the deal". But even though Morgan's been there and done that all before, his instincts aren't as sharp as they once were, he's not as sharp, especially when he crosses paths with a snakey Sheriff's deputy who might be on to him. Stroby is a first-rate crime writer and this is another quality novel. Without revealing too much and never selling the plot short, the author weaves the story around characters who know the score and the stakes but, like the reader, seldom know what's about to hit them. Sara and Morgan as the two protagonists are both characters with a keen sense of when their luck will run out and yet they can't help track down the truth, even to their ultimate peril. In fact, they seem almost a perfect match, their mutually flawed character made bare and their numerous weakness exposed during every encounter. At no time is their an issue with whether their personal lives affect their professional choices because, as Stroby so brilliantly portrays, they always do. (MYS STROBY)

My Stolen Son: The Nick Markowitz Story / by Susan Markowitz

On August 6, 2000, 15-year-old Nick Markowitz was just looking to stay out of harm's way. Arriving way past his curfew the night before at his San Fernando home, Nick had barely managed to stave off what he knew would be a verbal berating from both his parents but especially his mom Susan who'd issued a foreboding "we'll talk about it in the morning" as Nick retreated to his room. Sneaking out of the house in the early morning hours, Nick intended to keep away from home and maybe spend some time at the apartment of his step-brother, Ben. Only no one ever heard from him as the hours crept by and he was declared missing by the following evening. Found a few days later by hikers at a gravesite in Santa Barbara, Nick's body had been shot six times with a Tec-9 handgun and buried haphazardly in an isolated part of the canyon.
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The grisly details of Nick's abduction, detainment and ultimate murder would steadily come to light as the evidence unraveled a truly shocking set of prior details about Ben Markowitz's own seedy lifestyle, his involvement in a particularly notorious Southern California drug ring and, ultimately, his fatal betrayal of a contemptible but ruthless 20-year-old drug dealer named Jesse James Hollywood. Ben and Hollywood had actually grown up as friends and even played baseball together in high school before the feud over drug money had turned them into enemies, a situation making Nick a victim of circumstance when he was kidnapped. Hollywood and his gang had actually happened upon Nick while they were cruising the area in search of Ben (in hiding out of a concern for his safety) and had initially taken the youth only to use as collateral so Hollywood could extract a rather hefty drug debt owed him. But as the situation escalated with the issue still unresolved, Hollywood put his impulsive plan into action first orchestrating the shooting of Nick, ditching his accomplices (including triggerman Ryan Hoyt) and relocating to South America where he would live under a false name and as a suspect (the youngest ever) on the America's Most Wanted list until his capture in 2005.



Jesse James Hollywood

The trial of Jesse James Hollywood ironically coincided with the movie debut of Alpha Dog, the story's filmed adaptation. And while the movie version starring Bruce Willis and Emile Hirsch is nothing spectacular, the story itself is another truly creepy episode in the ongoing saga of the drug subculture permeating every rung of our society. Susan Markowitz, who wrote the book with heavy dose of editorial aid, is understandably a very sorrowful individual, grieved by the loss of her only (biological) son and the preventable circumstances of the tragedy. But the book somewhat begs the question of where the responsibility lies. There's Hollywood and his gang of accomplices, Ben Markowitz whose dissoluteness and irresponsibility led to the kidnapping and, perhaps most aggregiously, the over 42 witnesses who saw the situation for what it was--the prolonged detainment of an individual against their will--but didn't see the threat of any real danger and thus didn't report it. And, though it's never explicitly stated, some of the blame must fall on the parents. Not only is it implied that the kids (almost without exception everyone involved was under the age of 21) were largely given free reign to experiment with drugs, many of the parents (the Markowitz's included) knew beforehand that Hollywood's father Jack grew and distributed his own Marijuana, that he had prospered off drug transactions with local kingpins and had absorbed his son into the "family business" at a young age. It was common knowledge that the younger Hollywood would do anything to avoid suspicion (364.152 MARKOWIT)