The Mystery Starts Here

While we’re waiting for our new house to close escrow, I’ve got plenty – way too much – time on my hands, so I’m reading. I buzzed through Alafair Burke’s newest book, “212″ and loved it. (see previous blog). Too often I take six or eight books from the library and only wind up reading two or three because the others simply do not hold my attention. Well, I got lucky again. I picked up James Grippando’s latest mystery novel, “Money to Burn.”  What can I say? it’s fabulous.

The book starts with Michael Canella, a Wall Street hot shot, and his girl friend of four months, Ivy Layton, cruising on the company yacht with a group of high achievers from the investment firm of Saxton Silvers. Ivy is bored with the vapid wall street wives and convinces Michael to go off and rent a boat just for the two of them. They sail, sun, drink, make love and decide on the spur of the moment to get married. Too much wine ensues and when Michael awakes early the next morning with a killer hangover, Ivy is gone, and presumed dead.

Fast forward four years to the day of Michael 35th birthday. He’s on his way to another awards dinner and not thrilled. When he walks into the hotel lobby, two men in trench coats approach him, flash FBI badges and tell Michael he has to come with them. The whole thing is an elaborate ruse set up by Michael 2nd wife, Mallory who has planned a surprise party for his birthday. The party is a success and later in their hotel room while waiting for his wife to get ready for bed – and some hot sex, Michal checks his bank balances and finds….a zero balance. Someone has stolen his identity and drained his accounts dry. His only clue is a new email message: Just as planned, xoxo.

If you think things can’t get worse, just wait. Mallory is incensed over the loss of all “their” money – although she’s done nothing but spend what Michael earned. Then she flies into a rage, accusing Michael of still being in love with his first wife, Ivy. Michael tries to assure Mallory it’s not true, but deep down he knows he’s still in love with Ivy. He never really accepted her death and feels that somehow, somewhere, she’s still alive. But, right now, he’s got more important problem. He contacts his mentor at Saxton Silvers and to his horror finds that someone has begun to short sell all of Saxton’s stock. Soon he’s accused of insider trading, no one will believe his identity has been stolen, Mallory wants a divorce and everyone on Wall Street hates him.

Just when you think things can’t get any worse, they do! Michael is on the run, accused of murder. While he’s trying to figure out what happened to his life and elude the police and FBI, he realizes someone is trying to kill him. There are so many plot twists and turns it’s hard to keep up and the ending will leave you breathless. Grippando explains in very easy language just what happened to cause the stock market meltdown and I understand more now about what happened than I ever did before. I won’t tell you any more about the plot because I don’t want to ruin the surprises in this book. Just go out and buy a copy of “Money to Burn.” You won’t be sorry. Grippando is an excellent writer with a wicked little sense of humor that I love. I can’t wait for his next mystery to come out.

The novel starts when “a man who calls himself David Loogan” buys a shovel late at night. Right off the bat the reader is intrigued. Why does he “call himself “David Loogan, and what’s the shovel for? Turns out his good friend called and asked him to help bury a  body. Yup, then I was really hooked.

Basically David Loogan meets a man named Tom Kristol, the publisher of a semi-literary mystery magazine, Gray Streets. Tom asks David to be an editor for Gray Streets and, having nothing else to do, (and you wonder why),  David agrees. What he doesn’t realize is that the stories in Gray Streets tend to follow the simple formula: Plans go wrong. Bad things happen. People die. Tom and David become good friend and before you know it, David is having an affair with Tom’s wife, Laura.

After the beginning where David helps Tom bury a body, more people die, and all of them are associated in some way with the magazine. When Tom turns up dead, Elizabeth Waishkey, a detective with the Ann Arbor, Michigan police department doesn’t quite know what to make of David Loogan. Is he a killer, or an ally who might help her find the truth?

The book kept me guessing until the end because I couldn’t figure out who was killing everyone. Well, you won’t figure it out either and that’s the problem. I don’t want to spoil the book in case you decide to read it but…I feel the author didn’t play fair with his audience. I didn’t like the ending and the last two pages made me groan out loud. Suddenly, out of nowhere, David was conversing with dead people – and that was the first and only hint of anything paranormal. It simply didn’t fit.

The other problem I had with this book is that every character sounded the same. From the kind old man who wrote mysteries, to the female detective to her fifteen-year-old daughter, they all had the same voice. It made for some very tedious reading.  So do I recommend the book? Yes, I do but be prepared to be confused. The plotting is very convoluted and I’m not sure you’ll like the ending.