Sun 16 Nov 2008
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS review: GERALD PETIEVICH – Money Men and One-Shot Deal.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Authors , Reviews[3] Comments
GERALD PETIEVICH – Money Men and One-Shot Deal.
Harcourt Brace, hardcover, 1981. Money Men: published separately in paperback by Pinnacle, 1982; Signet, 1991. One-Shot Deal published separately in paperback by Pinnacle, 1983; Signet, 1991. Film (based on Money Men): Warner Bros., 1993, as Boiling Point.
These two short novels are printed in one volume and are Petievich’s first published fiction. He is a former member of the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps, and later was a special agent of the U.S. Secret Service assigned to counterfeit investigations. He knows intimately the subject he’s chosen for fiction, and that’s what makes these novels work so well.
Both novels feature Treasury agent Charles Carr. In Money Men he is after the man who shot to death another agent in a motel room that Carr had bugged. Not only do Carr and his partner, Jack Kelly, suffer the agony of listening to their fellow agent being murdered while they are too far away to help, they also must bear the brunt of the responsibility for the tragic operation.
Carr is going to be transferred, most likely to a desk job, but he talks his superior into giving him a few weeks before the move and he uses that time to stalk the agent’s killer.
Carr and Kelly work against the clock as they slowly close in on a con man named Red Diamond and his young cohort Ronnie Boyce. The setting is Los Angeles, the action fast, the plot tight, all written in a style that smacks hard of realism.
Washington, D.C., as well as Los Angeles is the setting for One-Shot Deal. This novel is the more ambitious of the two, and probably the best.
Here Carr is set on the trail of someone who has engineered the theft of government security paper from the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the special kind of paper used to print money.
The someone is a fascinating villain named Larry Phillips, an ex-con who is a skilled hypnotist and runs with beautiful blond prostitute Melba, a woman who is literally under his spell. The story is intricately plotted and builds in suspense to a satisfying conclusion.
Both novels are written in a direct, uncompromising style that establishes a tough authenticity. The dialogue is hard-edged and street-wise, and the knowing attention to detail lends a stark reality that only an insider can bring to this kind of fiction. Money Men and One-Shot Deal are both lean, mean, and entertaining.
Other Petievich novels are To Live and Die in Beverly Hills (1983), To Live and Die in L.A. (1984), and The Quality of the Informant (1985).
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
November 30th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Steve, did you know there’s a Petievich novel that was published (perhaps only) in Finnish? It’s called The Glass House (Lasitalo in Finnish, published in 1999, by Book Studio). At least it wasn’t published in the US at the time the translation appeared. And it still doesn’t seem to be out in English, since there are no copies in Abebooks, at least under the title.
November 30th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Juri
I’ve taken a look online myself, and while I’ve found Lasitalo mentioned in a few places, I haven’t found any reference to an edition published in English.
Interesting!
— Steve
December 1st, 2008 at 10:57 am
Someone should notify Charles Ardai or the guys at PointBlank or Stark House or Busted Flush… I haven’t read Lasitalo myself, but I think it got good reviews here. Will try to find more info. (Steve, you might post something about this as a separate entry… Just for convenience’s sake. And someone might definitely be interested.)