BOOKMONGER
Larceny drives two new suspense novels
This week we’ll look at two suspense
novels featuring antiheroes whose larce-
nous inclinations lead them into peril.
Author William Dean once covered the
courthouse beat as a newspaper reporter
in Boise, where he became acquainted
with a penitentiary inmate he describes as
“a pain-in-the-ass jailhouse lawyer.”
This week’s books
‘Dangerous Freedom’ by William Dean
Lonely Whale Press – 298 pp — $23.31
‘Murder with Strings Attached’ by Mark
Reutlinger
Wild Rose Press – 264 pp — $15
Now a novelist, Dean loosely bases his
ex-con protagonist on that colorful real-
life fi gure from years ago.
In “Dangerous Freedom,” Bud Baker
has been in prison for 25 years. While
behind bars, he’s become a self-taught
advocate who sues for prison reform.
After Baker scores several court wins that
cost the state corrections system a lot of
money, the governor authorizes his mid-
night release, on the condition that Baker
drop all legal actions against the state, and
that he never set foot in Idaho again.
Baker is put on a bus to the Oregon
C oast, where he hopes to pick up just
enough work to pay for passage to Alaska
and a fresh start away from trouble.
But in Astoria, his plan is sidetracked
when he falls for social worker Jo Jo
Summers. More than ever, the ex-con is
motivated to stay straight in order to win
her approval.
But then his new lady friend asks him
to revert to his larcenous ways to help her
solve a personal problem. Baker feels that
Jo Jo’s cause is righteous, but her solution
is not — and he’d risk spending the rest of
his life in prison if he agrees to help her.
“Dangerous Freedom” mixes armed
robbery with kidnapping with a heart of
tarnished gold. Astoria makes a great set-
ting, of course, and Bud Baker is a strong
central character.
Jo Jo is less convincing as a fl eshed-
out character, and there are some plot tran-
sitions that could have been more thor-
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oughly developed.
But the latter half of the book, which
involves two separate manhunts for Baker
as he attempts one fi nal escape, will keep
readers on the edge of their seats.
In the other novel, “Murder with
Strings Attached,” University Place,
Washington, author Mark Reutlinger intro-
duces us to protagonist Florence Palmer,
a “forty-something minor league burglar”
who has bigger ambitions.
On page one, Flo is about to steal a
priceless Guarneri violin from a famous
concert violinist, and hold it for ransom.
But the burglary gets botched, the vio-
linist discovers her in the act and she dis-
covers that the instrument is a fake. The
real Guarneri has been stolen already.
So Flo and the concert violinist team up
to get the real instrument back.
This is the fi rst of many times the
reader will be asked to suspend disbe-
lief. The book feels overly talky, although
maybe that’s because the story is told in
fi rst-person from Flo’s somewhat neurotic
point of view.
Readers will visit ritzy hotel rooms,
glitzy restaurants and palatial estates from
Seattle to the Bay Area. Even with murder
thrown into the mix, this book reads as a
light-hearted romp.
The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd
McMichael, who writes this weekly col-
umn focusing on the books, authors and
publishers of the Pacifi c Northwest. Con-
tact her at barbaralmcm@gmail.com