Paul Levine’s latest thriller is more roller coaster suspense and action than courtroom drama, and I had a blast with the characters and plot. With this novel, Levine just throws his previous playbook out the window, pulls a page from Raymond Chandler’s “The Simple Art Of Murder,” and plunges his readers through ranks of gunmen, car chases, and crooked cops.
I absolutely fell in love with Jimmy “Royal” Payne as he makes a complete wreck of his life, then struggles to put to rights the life of a twelve-year-old boy who won me over, too. When I found out that Payne is the author’s new signature character and that a second book is already in the works, I was a happy reader.
Jimmy is a fantastic character. In this first book, he starts out so close to the bottom that anything he does is going to show as character growth. I kept picturing a young Richard Dreyfuss playing the lead, and I think that’s a good fit. Jimmy has been hammered at every turn by life, and in the opening chapters of this book he gets blackmailed into bribing a judge, which results in even harsher circumstances.
Watching Jimmy in action is kind of like seeing a chain reaction car wreck taking place in slow motion. You see it; you know it’s coming; and you can’t believe the guy can’t get out of the way of it. But, miraculously, Jimmy is the kind of guy who racks up a lot of damage and still manages to limp through by sheer force of will, cleverness, and desperation. I’m a sucker for those kinds of characters every time, and it stands to reason that Jimmy’s favorite fictional hero is Jim Rockford of The Rockford Files. Rockford is one of my favorites as well.
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