Cash Landing
A Novel
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3.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $27.99
Publisher Description
The New York Times bestselling author of Cane and Abe and Black Horizon blends Goodfellas and Elmore Leonard in this wild, suspenseful caper inspired by actual events, in which a band of amateur thieves pulls off one of the biggest airport heists in history with deadly consequences.
Every week, a hundred million dollars in cash arrives at Miami International Airport, shipped by German banks to the Federal Reserve. A select group of trusted workers moves the bags through Customs and loads them into armored trucks.
Ruban Betancourt has always played by the rules. But the bank taking his house and his restaurant business going bust has driven him over the edge. He and his wife deserve more than life has handed them, and he’s come up with a ballsy scheme to get it. With the help of an airport insider, he, his coke-head brother-in-law, Jeffrey, and two ex-cons surprise the guards loading the armored trucks and speed off with $7.4 million in the bed of a pickup truck.
Investigating the heist, FBI agent Andie Henning, newly transferred to Miami from Seattle, knows the best way to catch the thieves is to follow the money. Jeffrey’s drug addiction is as conspicuous as the Rolex watches he buys for dancers at the Gold Rush strip club. One of the ex-cons, Pinky Perez, makes no secret of his plan to own a swinger’s club—which will allow him carte blanche with his patrons’ wives. Levelheaded Ruban is desperately trying to lay low and hold things together.
But Agent Henning isn’t the only one on their trail, and in the mob-meets-Miami fashion, these accidental thieves suddenly find themselves way in over their heads . . . and sinking fast.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
FBI special agent Andie Henning, a regular in bestseller Grippando's Jack Swytek series (Black Horizon, etc.), plays a leading role in this tragicomic crime novel. In the heist of a bank transfer at a Miami International Airport warehouse, Ruban Betancourt, the head of an amateur gang that includes his coke-addicted brother-in-law, manages to bag more than $9 million in cash. The robbery goes off without a hitch, but that's the last time things go right. The size of the haul attracts rival crooks, and Ruban must cope with the fallout from his henchmen's greed and stupidity while keeping his role hidden from his wife, Savannah. Recently transferred from Seattle to Miami, Andie digs away at whatever small clues she finds, at one point going undercover in a seedy sex club. Beleaguered Ruban's every move seems to backfire with money hemorrhaging and dreams evaporating. Those expecting the wit of the late Donald E. Westlake's John Dortmunder caper series will be disappointed.
Customer Reviews
Get short changed
The author is an American lawyer turned novelist (like John Grisham except he’s from Florida not Mississippi) best known for a series of legal thrillers based around Miami defence lawyer Jack Swyteck. This one’s ostensibly a freestanding effort (see footnote) based around driven but cute FBI detective Andie Henning.
Ne’er do well thirty-something Ruban Betancourt escaped from Cuba to Miami in 1994. His first name is actually Karl. His father was a Russian soldier stationed is Castro’s peoples’ paradise back in the day. He married a local, which makes our boy half Russian and half Cuban, hence, Ruban. Clever, eh? Anyhow, Ruban, his obese cocaine addicted brother-in-law, and his venal uncle get together with a couple of local paisanos to rob a big shipment of greenbacks from a German bank to the Miami Fed. They get away with the dough. Hanging onto it in the face of escalating stupidity and venality is the problem.
If a Goodfellas rewrite with wetbacks instead of wise guys weren’t bad enough, Mr G’s prose channels his inner Elmore Leonard. Egregiously IMO.
Footnote
I say ostensibly because Jack makes a brief appearance at the very end as Andie’s love interest. It feels tacked on and unnecessary. Spoiler alert: As fans of Mr G’s work will already know, Andie and Jack marry in due course.