A Man of Lies
A Novel
-
- Pre-Order
-
- Expected Jul 4, 2023
-
- $16.99
-
- Pre-Order
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
When his lover is killed by their mob boss, a hardened criminal insider decides to pursue one last elaborate heist in an effort to rid himself of his underground lifestyle for good.
Barrett Rye has always been told he can be only one thing in life: an enforcer. He's a seven-foot wall of muscle and the most effective collector in the largest criminal enterprise in the Midwest. After he realizes he wants more out of life than hurting people, he and his mob accountant boyfriend, Mickey, decide to steal enough money from their boss to disappear and start over. But they get caught, Mickey is killed, and Barrett is given one chance to pay back his debts.
His plan is simple. He knows that Henry Holzmann, a small-time mafioso in Omaha, has a lead on the score of a lifetime. Barrett can't get the prize himself, but he's not trying to. He just needs a piece of it. He is going to cause so much chaos—and throw Holzmann's life into such disarray—that the man will pay him anything to make it stop.
But nothing ever stays simple, and Barrett has always been too clever for his own good. As the mayhem he has seeded spirals out of control, it will take all his prodigious strength and wit to stay alive, and he'll have to decide: Does he want to win, or does he want to be the better man that he has always wanted to be?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Crane's ambitious, fast-moving debut follows a gay mobster desperate to leave the underworld behind. Hulking mob enforcer Barrett Rye thinks he's found a possible life partner in Mickey, a numbers whiz who went to work for Barrett's employer, Chicago mob boss Enrico Scarpello, as repayment for a debt Mickey's parents owed. But the relationship ends prematurely when Scarpello, believing that the couple ripped him off, has Mickey killed in front of Barrett. Left alive to repay the tens of thousands Scarpello believes was stolen from him, Barrett, who is routinely underestimated by others, hatches an elaborate plan centering on Omaha hoodlum Henry Holzmann, who believes he has a line on a lost Fabergé egg worth millions. There's a lot of bloodshed and a lot of plot twists here, perhaps one too many for most readers to swallow. Crane's reach may exceed his grasp, but it's a bold and exciting first effort.
