Whiplash River

Starred review from May 28, 2012
Berney takes his rightful place as heir to Elmore Leonard with this witty and nimble comedic thriller, a sequel to his first novel, Gutshot Straight (2010). Charles “Shake” Bouchon, once a getaway driver for the Armenian mafia in Southern California, wants to go straight. After a second stint in prison for grand theft auto, he’s bought a restaurant in Belize. The food’s good, but business is slow, and Shake is falling behind on his payments to Baby Jesus, the local drug lord who bankrolled this new venture. But that’s just the beginning of Shake’s problems: when a mysterious operator named Quinn is nearly killed in Shake’s dining room, Shake is drawn into a circuitous plot involving fertility tourism, exotic animal smuggling, a murderous oil and gas executive (he’s in fracking, of course), and an Ocean’s 11–style heist of a priceless artifact that Quinn tricks Shake into believing is the nose of the Sphinx. The exotic locales are vibrant, the supporting cast larger than life, and the plot hums along without a wasted page. Agent: Richard Parks.

Starred review from July 1, 2012
Once again, Shake Bouchon is determined to go straight. He's the proud owner of a restaurant on Ambergris Cay, an island off the coast of Belize. But in short order, Shake is the target of three different hit men and a beautiful and tenacious FBI agent determined to make him rat out the L.A.-based Armenian Mob featured in his first misadventure (Gutshot Straight, 2010). Most of the heat is initially aimed at Harrigan Quinn, a devil-may-care septuagenarian and possibly a former contract spook for the CIA, but by saving Quinn's life, Shake becomes another target. Soon, his restaurant explodes. With $65 in his pocket and assassins in hot pursuit, Shake flees Belize, with Quinn in tow. Butand there are always buts in Berney's plotsQuinn pitches a lucrative con in Cairo designed to get both these amiable mavericks back on their financial feet. Trouble follows, of course, complete with hitters. Berney's plot makes as many sharp turns as San Francisco's famously curvy Lombard Street. His characters, especially the over-the-top Quinn and pretty much every female in the book, are brilliantly drawn. His portrait of Ambergris Cay suggests that he really knows that quirky, charming island, and the dialogue is crisp and often funny, or laced with irony. Gutshot Straight made Booklist's 2010 Best Crime Novels list. Whiplash River should be a contender for this year's list.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)