Crush

May 25, 2015
At a Hollywood nightclub, bouncer Caleb “Crush” Rush, the beefy hero of this cinematic crime novel from Sutton (15 Minutes to Live), stops an impending fight on the dance floor and ejects the two miscreants with no one noticing, except for 18-year-old Amelia Trask, the spoiled, sexually precocious daughter of Stanley Trask, who with his brother runs GlobalInterLink, the world’s largest communications company. When two thugs later try to kidnap Amelia outside the club, Crush comes to the rescue. Duly impressed, Amelia hires Crush as her bodyguard. Crush soon finds himself in conflict with Victoria Donleavy, his former boss at Tigon Security, where he once worked a security job for Stanley, and in a serious fight with the Russian Mafia. Providing welcome assistance are tae kwon do master/bartender Catherine Gail and flaky computer expert K.C. Zerbe. The overheated action scenes and bigger-than-life characters seem tailor made for the big screen. Agent: Allison Cohen, Gersh Agency.

Starred review from May 1, 2015
A fast, crazy crime thriller filled with humor and smatterings of blood. Caleb Rush, nicknamed Crush, is a big-ass hulk of a bartender, bouncer, and "immovable object" who works in an LA bar called the Nocturne. "Rush had hurt a lot of martial-arts teachers," so if you care to mess with this guy, you'd better either have a gun or a passel of gangbanger chums all jumping him at once. Young Amelia Trask watches Crush in action and learns he is Bulgarian, or maybe Mexican or Italian "or something." Soon a dude in a Lamborghini tries to snatch her in front of the bar, and suddenly Crush is entangled in Amelia's life. Gail, a "taekwondo master 'slash' bartender," and Crush's sort-of brother, Zerbe, are colorful characters adding spice to the plot. Rush had once protected Amelia's father, Stanley, a "filthy rich, arrogant" thief "who a whole lot of people probably wanted dead" and who "probably stole loose change from his left pocket when his right pocket wasn't looking." Now Amelia wants Crush to protect her from the Russian Mafia, and despite his toughness, he may get himself killed in the process. Some great action scenes result, such as the one involving a GTO bursting out of a warehouse elevator. This brief novel crackles with sharp dialogue-"if you can't lie to your wife, who can you lie to?"-and a witty narrative voice that put the reader in mind of Elmore Leonard. It's not better than Leonard, but it's surely in the master's league. The author has won two Emmys and several other prestigious awards and already has a Crush sequel ready to roll titled Heart Attack & Vine. This one could make it to the big screen, but don't wait for the movie. Buy the book. It may be the first of a long series.

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July 1, 2015
Sutton's novel reads like a rousing episode of a top-notch TV crime series, and there's nothing wrong with that. Caleb Rush, the Crush of the title, is a six-foot-five pack of muscle who hires out as bodyguard-bouncer to about anyone in L.A. who can afford him. This time he's drawn into the world of gazillionaire Stanley Trask, who makes his money the old-fashioned way: he screws people. It's Trask's daughter, Amelia, who hires Crush for cloudy motives that change from chapter to chapter and provide the affecting heart of this masterfully machined bit of pop culture. Fights. Chases. Torture. Surprising revelations. All at a ferocious pace, set into a swagger of a book whose ironic tone reveals the author's past in series TV (he was a scripter on Cheers and Boston Legal). Literate dialogue among the karate kicks and snapped forearms make this an easy sell to anyone seeking a sassy diversion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)