Straits of Fortune
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
Written in the classic noir tradition of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, Straits of Fortune is a fast-paced and sometimes deadly adventure set in America's sexiest city.
Ex-cop Jack Vaughn, the best thing to happen to crime fiction since Chandler's Philip Marlowe hung up his holster, moved from the gritty streets of New York to Miami to work as a personal trainer. The sun, sand, and tanned bodies of Miami are a welcome distraction from the haunting memory of another cop's death in New York. But when he becomes involved with millionaire businessman Colonel Patterson, he realizes his newfound peace is short-lived.
The Colonel offers Jack a hundred grand to do a seemingly simple favor. But getting involved with the Colonel also means getting involved with his daughter, the exotic wild child Vivian, who once broke Jack's heart. Jack had sworn to forget her, but this memorable cast of characters lures him back into their double-dealing circle.
The deeper he gets, the more Jack finds himself entangled in an ever-expanding web of lies, lust, and violence. A dark, hard-boiled look at the dangerous underbelly of glamorous Miami, Straits of Fortune is an unforgettable debut novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gagliano's debut crackles with the same energy that characterized Robert Crais's early Elvis Cole novels. Jack Vaughn, a disgraced New York City cop, has moved to Miami and become a personal trainer "a gym rat for hire." Retired colonel Andrew Patterson, owner of Pellucid Labs and a former exercise client, offers Jack $100K for an unusual job: sinking the yacht that's parked a couple of hundred yards offshore behind the colonel's beach house, along with a dead man on board. Complicating Jack's decision is the fact that the colonel's daughter, Vivian, happens to be Jack's former lover, who left him for pornographer Randy Matson, the dead man on the boat. Jack resists the job for a while, but eventually climbs aboard, at which point very bad things start to happen. Gagliano's Miami is a jittery mix of beautiful women, handsome bad boys, thugs, smugglers and weird eccentrics, all of whom the author draws with panache. With Jack Vaughn's first outing, Gagliano makes an auspicious beginning on a promising new series.