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by Josh Haven
In the first caper from a "promising new talent" (Publishers Weekly), a skilled counterfeiter hires a crew of career criminals to steal an artwork from a speeding train.
When former platoon sergeant Matt Kubelsky is paroled from Ray Brook Federal Correctional Institute in upstate New York, he's surprised to find his ex-girlfriend waiting for him out in the parking lot. An ex-girlfriend he's spent years pining for after she dumped him and stopped answering his letters. An ex-girlfriend who wonders if her apparently criminally-hardened ex-boyfriend can help her out of some extra-legal difficulty of her own.
During the years Matt was in prison, Kelly Haggerty discovered she couldn't earn a satisfactory living as an artist, so she turned her artistic talents to counterfeiting foreign currency―and ended up embroiled in an international money laundering intrigue. Now she hopes she can get herself out of trouble with a cleverly-plotted theft and one last enormous score.
The missing ingredient is someone Kelly can trust to do the dirty work, recruiting career criminals who won't flinch at the opportunity to make good money by whatever means necessary. And Matt is happy to oblige, as it seems like the perfect opportunity to settle the score with the men responsible for ruining his life and putting him away for a crime he didn't commit. The heist―a horseback robbery of valuable artwork from a speeding Amtrak train―seems to be going perfectly, until one of the players starts to suspect he's been paid in counterfeit bills…
Pulse-pounding suspense, wholly original action scenes, and enough double-crosses to leave readers reeling make this caper a must-read for fans of fast, adrenaline-fueled crime fiction. The first thriller from the author whose seafaring adventure novels are published as J.H. Gelernter, Fake Money, Blue Smoke announces an exciting new voice in the genre.
"Exceptional… just when it seems that the story could be wrapping up, [Haven] piles on more action and twists. In addition, the various locales and the little flourishes (executioner's scimitar, anyone?) raise this to the book equivalent of a blockbuster movie. It's not to be missed." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Darkly funny, horrifically violent, packed with bizarre twists, and full of outrageous schemes, brutal double crosses, and sadistic revenge. It's not for the squeamish, but it's a powerful book―tightly written, with an original plot, compelling characters, and a stunning conclusion." - Booklist (starred review)
"The high point comes midway: a hilarious not-so-great train robbery. Rat-a-tat dialogue, concise character delineation, and brisk pacing will remind readers of Elmore Leonard. But Haven also sprinkles diverting sidebars about movies and the art world throughout, from the controversial painter Damien Hirst to the film Casablanca. A rip-roaring roller coaster ride from a fresh new voice." - Kirkus Reviews
This information about Fake Money, Blue Smoke was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Before publishing his first novel, Josh Haven was an art critic for magazines & newspapers in the US & Europe and an astrogeophysicist who solved the Saturn-Hyperion density/porosity problem. His seafaring adventure novels are published under the name J.H. Gelernter, and Fake Money, Blue Smoke is his first crime novel.
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