The Bottom Line: Voted the year’s best Crime Thriller in the 2024 BestThrillers.com Book Awards
Michael Balter’s debut crime thriller starts on a deliciously contrarian note. In declaring that an aspirational line in the Old Dominion song “No Such Thing as a Broken Heart” about following dreams is dead wrong, Balter’s narrator sets up the idea that greed is good, and a sucker (in this case an angel investor) is born every minute.
The pressure to raise capital for their startup has put a strain on Marty and Bo’s lives.
So when Nico Scava offered to invest, they eagerly accepted. He had money, connections in the art world, and a creative idea, but maybe they should have asked more questions.
Now Nico’s dead and they’re on the hook for whatever scheme he was running.
The Russian mob is after them, and if they don’t find $10 million and a mysterious missing painting in the next few days, they’ll be dead too.
Their frantic chase will lead them from a cabin in the Oregon woods to a Portland strip club, from an aging artist to a bogus baron, and deep into the history of a missing masterpiece that someone is willing to kill to obtain.
As the bodies pile up, Marty and Bo will have some tough choices to make about how far they’ll go to protect their families, their company, and themselves.
