Vanishing Games

Starred review from May 25, 2015
A shipment of incredibly valuable uncut sapphires, smuggled out of Burma and hijacked by pirates in the South China Sea, provides the MacGuffin for Edgar-finalist Hobbs’s fantastic sequel to 2013’s Ghostman. Enter a pair of professional thieves, Jack (aka Mr. Outis/Ghostman) and his onetime mentor, now partner, Angela. Each of them is a master of disguise, able to alter posture, attitude, accent, and expression to suit the moment. Equipped with an array of false passports, they move through the glamorous world of the super-rich in Hong Kong and Macao. Jack has no qualms about killing and does his share. Yet Hobbs stops the action, when he sees fit, in the most amazing fashion. In one scene, Jack and a professional assassin pause to discuss Greek mythology and the story of the cyclops Polyphemus for several pages before resuming their battle to the death. Those who can stomach the graphic violence will find this an irresistible ride. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber.

June 1, 2015
The brilliant criminal mind of Hobbs' debut, Ghostman (2013), returns to stake his claim to some precious gems-and potentially bigger game. "I don't just make problems disappear, I can make anything disappear," declares Jack, the cool hero of Hobbs' second novel. As a kind of secret agent for the big-money-heist set, he knows his way around smuggling, killing, and secret identities. All of that comes into play in this hyperactive Macau-set thriller, which turns on a yacht making a delivery of sapphires when a sniper working for Jack's boss decides to claim the gems for himself-and discovers an "object" on the boat that's worth millions. In Hobbs' vision, corruption is endemic to Macau's culture both above- and underground (much of the action takes place at the Tammany Hall Casino), so Jack's calculating, I-got-this demeanor makes him the good guy, and Hobbs humanizes him a bit by filling out some of his back story with Angela, his mentor, lover, and "jugmarker" (heist mastermind). As with this book's predecessor, there are entertaining digressions on Triad gangsters and the mechanics of pickpocketing, safecracking, counterfeiting, and scoring an illegal gun. (More queasily, there are also details on performing emergency eye surgery on yourself.) But this novel lacks the smoothness and energy of its predecessor: Jack takes his time to enter the narrative, the truth of the mysterious "object" on the boat is an underwhelming reveal, and Jack's affinity for The Odyssey feels less like character depth and more like a gimmicky prompt for third-act speechifying. The closing chapters have plenty of action and gunplay, with hints of more about Jack and Angela's relationship to come. But this adventure shows that there's a fine line between a character with a wiped identity and one with a blank personality. An entertaining romp but from an author who's done more stylish work.

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Starred review from June 1, 2015
Thriller fans still holding their breath since turning the last page of Hobbs' spectacular debut, Ghostman (2013), finally can exhale: Jack White, the Ghostman, is back. But don't get too comfortable; White's latest caper is nearly as white-knuckle exciting as its predecessor. Jack, who specializes in making criminals, including himself, disappear, has an Achilles heel: his mentor, the mercurial Angela, is a master at disappearing, too, but Jack is desperately in love with her. Now, after years of silence, Angela is back in touch: she needs Jack and needs him now, in Macao, where another caper is going off the rails. So it's off to an Asian sin city that makes Las Vegas look like a play date for overprotected suburban kids. It opens with another stunning set piece (Hobbs is two for two in slam-bang starts), this time involving the open-water heist of a cache of rare sapphires. It goes bad, of course, but not in the usual way: the ship carrying the sapphires is also carrying another, far-more-valuable commodity that has all manner of underworld characterseach more idiosyncratically compelling than the lastchasing, dodging, and killing (often by beheading) one another. Angela is sought by all and needs Jack You're my vanishing act, kid to get her out of harm's way. Hobbs spikes the reader's adrenalin count as well as anybody in the genreLee Child, Patrick Lee, et al.but along the way he dispenses an incredible mother lode of fascinating information about how crooks do what they do ( I know a lot about a lot of different things, Jack notes). And at the core is the delicious interpersonal tension between Jack and Angela, two vanishing acts who only want to connect. Read it fast, and don't forget to breathe.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Word of mouth helped make Hobbs' debut a breakout smash; those same mouths will be all over this one, too.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2015

Hobbs's Ghostman was a stand-out debut, with rights sold to 25 countries, a film option snatched by Warner Bros., and 70,000 copies sold across formats in the United States. It was also awarded the Crime Writers' Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, with Hobbs the youngest winner ever. This follow-up again features ghostly Jack, unseen and unknown by most people but always accessible to his boss, Angela, though for the last six years he hasn't been sure she's alive. Then she appears out of the blue, needing help to track a pirate in the South China Sea who made off with a stash of uncut sapphires and more (much, much more) after boarding a smugglers' yacht and offing his two erstwhile colleagues. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

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