The Deadly Kiss-Off

February 18, 2019
Set in an unspecified part of the American West, Di Filippo’s disappointing second caper thriller featuring disbarred attorney Glen McClinton and former arsonist Stan Hasso involves a far less ingenious get-rich-quick scheme than the one in its predecessor, 2018’s The Big Get-Even. When Stan gets a gig driving an 18-wheeler loaded with fake goods across the country, Glen joins him as his shotgun-toting bodyguard. The arrest of a counterfeit game console distributor leaves their employer, local mob boss Vincent “Weeping Ear” Santo, with a warehouse full of 5,000 bogus Intel microprocessors on his hands. In search for a new buyer for the chips, Stan turns to his former business partners in a harebrained venture that would have turned parts of a wrecked ship into jewelry. These partners, in turn, connect Stan with a professor who claims to have invented a new handheld explosives detector that requires microprocessors. The con, naturally, doesn’t unfold as Glen and Stan hope, and leads to an unsatisfying ending. Readers will hope Di Filippo gets back on track next time. Agent: Richard Curtis, Richard Curtis Assoc.

March 1, 2019
Glen and Stan, the scammers from Di Filippo's fine The Big Get-Even (2018) are with us again, looking to realize what narrator Glen aptly calls "dreams of quick, unearned wealth." Their first venture, trucking knockoff baby formula?really! ersatz Similac!?across country, winds down. So they're on to a new scam: the Luckman Preemptive Blast Agent Sensor. It looks like a video-game pistol, and it doesn't really detect explosives; but if they can peddle it fast to dodgy gangs and governments, they will divvy up $120 million "after expenses." About here, caper-novel suspense should be building as our gang races to get the money before the suckers catch on. But Di Filippo slows things down with lengthy interludes about the private lives of the participants, who tend to be dreary rather than raffish. And the finale seems to belong to another novel, pivoting from caper to noir, with its freight of heartbreak, murder, and suicide. Still, this deserves a recommendation for the fine writing and the intriguing look into the mechanics of big-deal thievery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)