Suitcase City

January 19, 2015
Set largely in and around Tampa, Fla., in 1997, this noir gem from Watson (Fighting in the Shade) charts how past transgressions come back to threaten Jimmy Teach, a former college football star who quarterbacked the Florida Gators to an SEC championship and briefly played in the NFL. Now a recently widowed (and hard-drinking) vice president of sales for a pharmaceutical company, Teach, who is white, resides in an affluent Tampa neighborhood with his teenage daughter. His idyllic existence is turned upside down when he assaults a young black man who accosted him in a bar restroom. Racial tensions in the area are already high due to a serial killer murdering prostitutes of color, and Teach finds himself at the center of a media firestorm. When the police connect him to the murder of a prostitute, Teach realizes someone from his shadowy past is out to ruin him. A deeply contemplative and darkly poetic prose style complements the well-crafted plot.

Starred review from January 15, 2015
A taut tale of crime and vengeance along Florida's Gulf Coast.Jimmy Teach has led an eventful life so far. He's piloted a boat that delivered illicit drugs to the Tampa Bay area, shot three Guatemalan smugglers, served time in the slammer but had his record sealed, starred as a college quarterback, paralyzed a gridiron opponent and lost a wife. At age 45, he's a successful pharmaceutical salesman raising a daughter alone and vowing to become a better person. But "bartenders know the past always comes looking for you," and man, does it ever for Teach. Bloodworth ''Blood'' Naylor oozes up from the past; he's a former associate now bent on Teach's destruction. A seemingly chance altercation with a young black man in a men's room blossoms into a potential civil rights lawsuit against the white Teach, and newspaper reporter Marlie Turkel thinks his troubles will make great copy. Indeed, he views her first article as "a masterpiece of innuendo and insinuation masquerading as objective reporting." The injured man's attorney declares, "You, Mister Teach, are going to be on the hot seat, and it is going to be my hand on the switch." The plot may not be unique, but the telling is masterful and sprinkled with colorful expressions. A detective sees an obvious fact as "plain as the balls on a tall dog." For all Teach's flaws-he loves drinking Wild Turkey and has a quick temper-readers will sympathize with him, as he will do anything to protect his teenage daughter. Sit back and enjoy Watson's latest. It's better than bourbon on the rocks.

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October 1, 2014

Jimmy Teach is a former football hero whose glory days are long behind him. Now a widower and a successful executive in Tampa, FL, his life revolves around his teenage daughter and his ever-increasing dependency on alcohol. When Teach is attacked at a bar and defends himself, he assumes he successfully foiled a mugging. However, Teach's assault on the would-be thief quickly morphs into a race relations nightmare that the press is all too happy to cover. Desperate to hold on to his long-fought-for social status, Teach starts doing a little investigation of his own. What he uncovers leads him to confront his criminal past and the people he thought he had left behind. VERDICT This is a solid revenge tale with drug addiction and murdered hookers thrown in for good measure. The plot takes a circuitous route, but this enables Watson (Sweet Dream Baby; Fighting in the Shade) to adroitly weave the past and the present while illustrating the devastating power of vengeance. There is plenty of action to be had in this suspense tale, but it is the examination of the characters' motivations that really makes it shine. For fans of Lee Child and Nicci French.--Amy Nolan, St. Joseph, MI

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2014
Jimmy Teach, the star of this hypnotically beautiful novel, made some quick bucks in the late 1970s as an errand boy for drug dealers in the Florida mangroves. He got out of the business, but some colleagues were left dead on the deck of a boat. Twenty years later, he's a respectable vice president of a Tampa pharmaceuticals company. It's a placid life until he thwarts a possible mugging and finds the would-be mugger suing him. Then an old girlfriend is murdered, and crime-scene details point to Teach as the killer. At this point, the readerbut not Teachbegins to grasp that these events are connected, all part of an intricate revenge scheme. Each of these plot strands becomes a serpent's coil that winds around the willing reader and won't let go until the tension is released in the violent finale. Paranoia has been defined as seeing too much pattern. Author Watson can make us sweaty victims of that madness, partaking of it, suffering from it, and loving every minute.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)