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Riley James has been living the criminal life since he was quite young, and now he's ready to get out. As a teen, he ran messages and collected money for the Monsanto brothers, with whom he had a relatively good and trusting relationship. Now they mostly use him for smuggling, since he is quite skilled at navigating the local waters of Belize. But then Riley blows his latest assignment when he has a car accident and has to complete a huge drug run to pay off his debts before he can quit the game, the infamous "one last job." Riley has been transitioning to the straight life for a while. He is full of regret for the things he has done and really wants to get away from the source of his unhappiness. Together with a friend, Harvey, he plans to become a co-owner of Lindy's bar. He has also found a woman he wants to marry, Candice. But the new job has him working with some major losers, and he knows that the chances are that he may need to leave all that his dreams behind. Things turn ugly pretty quickly; lives are lost and loved ones threatened. Although I liked the book overall, I really had a hard time with its structure. The first several chapters are told from the point of view of a former nun who is friends with Riley, and she is telling someone about his life adventures. Then there is a switch to straight third person—it seemed to me that at that point, the narrator should have been Riley, viewed from a first person point of view. In addition, the dialogue was hard to follow—at times it was half quoted and half not, which was confusing. Vasquez manages to create empathy for a basically unsympathetic character in Riley, who does seem to sincerely regret the actions that he has taken that have made him what he is today. He is a resourceful man, which made it all the more puzzling to see him pull a really stupid action at the end of the book. The choice of Belize as a setting was an excellent one, as it has a built-in noir ambience. Despite its structural limitations, the characterization and engrossing plot of MR. HOOLIGAN will keep you reading. § Formerly a training development manager for a large company, Maddy is now retired and continues to enable the addiction of crime fiction fans as owner of the online discussion group, 4 Mystery Addicts(4MA), while avidly reading in every possible free moment herself.
Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, April 2011
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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