Their Wildest Dreams
A Novel
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
“Peter Abrahams is my favorite American suspense novelist.”—Stephen King
“Mackie dreaded the mail.” From this simple beginning, Peter Abrahams opens the curtains on a mesmerizing world down on the Mexican border, a world of complex and passionate people whose ambitions will lead them on a relentless collision course, a desert world that rises to the mythic in Their Wildest Dreams. The suspense will grab you and not let go, the surprises will shock you, but in the end it will be the wonderful characters who linger in your mind.
Characters like Mackie Larkin, a suburban mother desperate for money, who finds she can earn it as a stripper; Kevin Larkin, her ex-husband whose get-rich-quick schemes left her with a mountain of debt, and who now dreams up an even better one; Lianne, their beautiful, impulsive teenage daughter, for whom almost anything, even bank robbery, is possible; Jimmy Marz, the wrangler she loves, who gets a dangerous onetime offer that could take him to the life he’s always wanted; Buck Samsonov, the charismatic strip-club owner building a southwestern empire in the lawless style of a 19th-century robber baron; Clay Krupsha, a twenty-first-century captain of detectives in a border town where no crime is what it seems; and Nicholas Loeb, a struggling mystery writer whose encounter with an unstable muse entangles him in a web of true crime more mysterious than anything he imagined.
Utterly original, multilayered, and marked by the gripping suspense, sharp wit, and fascinating psychological insights for which Peter Abrahams has been acclaimed, here is a major work—a riveting story of modern-day desperadoes living their wildest dreams.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After two less-than-stellar outings (The Tutor; Last of the Dixie Heroes), Abrahams is once again at the top of his game in this wildly inventive, captivating caper. Make that several capers this novel's multiple plot threads and unlikely assortment of characters carom off each other like so many carnival bumper cars. In typical fashion, Abrahams places a gaggle of ordinary folks in what gradually become distinctly unordinary scenarios, with an ever-so-creepy edge. In Arizona, divorc e Helen MacIsaac (Mackie) takes up stripping to make ends meet. Meanwhile, her 17-year-old daughter, Lianne, hooks up with a wrangler at nearby Ocotillo Ranch, the site of her dad's latest get-rich-quick scheme. Back east, Nick Loeb, a writer whose latest crime caper isn't up to snuff ("of course, that was only the opinion of Publishers Weekly") finds an unlikely muse in Mary Jane Krupsha, an amateur critic on Amazon.com. Suggesting that Loeb get some on-the-job experience, she takes him to the Mexican border town of Agua Fr a, where her ex-husband is captain of detectives. And where do you suppose Mackie is honing her ecdysiast routine? In Agua Fr a, of course, at a bo te called Buckaroo's, which boasts "a towering sign with two red nipples in the os." Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the wrangler is enlisting Lianne's aid with a proposed bank hold-up in of course the busy burg of Agua Fr a. And we haven't mentioned Mr. Samsonov, the owner of Buckaroo's, who's friendly with some nice Russian mafiya fellows, and who's taken a shine to dancer Red (aka Mackie). The author's up-to-the-minute pop-culture references lend an easygoing immediacy, and his wry humor is spot on when one character wants to borrow a cell phone, he's answered, "Mind waiting a bit? Off-peak starts in three minutes." Off-peak, however, need not be a concern to readers of this bravura thrillfest.
