thrillers

This is Lashner's most ambitious work and is clearly a departure from his first three books, all of which I read and enjoyed. South Phildelphia lawyer Victor Carl is the narrator, but this has little to do with being a Grisham type novel. This is Mystic River moves to South Philly. It all starts with Joey Cheaps getting his throat slashed. Joey leaves the world the way he lived in it, owing everyone in sight, including Carl. Hours before his death Joey had met with Victor Carl and as Carl put it, "...Joey Cheaps had given me something. It was something I didn't want, something I had no use for, but he had given it to me all the same. He had given me a murder." As Carl recounts Joey's tale of a twenty year old murder he also reveals a part of himself and his loyalty to a client. That loyalty in Victor Carl's world means "in a world where every person has turned against him there is one person who will fight by his side as long as there is a battle to be fought. And the final battle, far as I could see, was just beginning." Truer words were never put to paper.

Carl's search for Joey's killer leads down many paths and to many interesting a bizarre characters. Halfway through the book he notes, "I had gotten in the middle of something, of which I didn't have the first clue." Right again.

The story unwinds like the peeling of an onion and glimpses of the answer show for a moment and then the story turns in another direction. However, no matter what direction it takes, the reader has signed on for the duration and the answer when it comes, is well worth the trip.

On a personal note, I came by this book through the generosity of a lady who has read my reviews and found them useful. Her husband had started the book, but found it not to his liking and declined to finish it. She offered to send it to me to see what I thought of it. Well, I am delighted she did and I would be more than happy to return it so that she might read it or her husband might give it a second chance. I found it fascinating and I hope you will also.

South Philly. Not the more popular - and more tired - cities of New York, LA, or New Orleans, but South Philly - the setting William Lashner chooses for "Past Due". It is a good choice - a city Lashner clearly knows well, and of which he writes with passion and forcefulness on a par with Dennis Lehane's Boston. A portrait of Lashner's Philadelphia is reflected in the author's photo on the dust jacket: the battered countenance of an ex-boxer, the smug confidence, the ugly red tie reminiscent of that worn by Lashner's lawyer-hero Victor Carl.

Victor Carl, like Lashner, is Philadelphia personified. A blue-collar lawyer, proud but far from rich, street smart but never sophisticated. In "Past Due", it is only Carl's loyalty and honor compels him to track down the killer of Joey "Cheaps" Parma, a marginal mobster and sometimes Carl-client who leaves this life with lots of debts and zero assets. Carl's investigation takes him back to the 20-year disappearance of Tommy Greeley, uncovering a sordid tale of the usual drugs, thugs, murder, and mayhem, with a Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice thrown in for good measure. But while the plot may be pedestrian by some standards, the story pummels along from chapter to chapter like a heavy weight bouncing off the ropes, buoyed by the strength of colorful characters playing their parts in seedy bars and tacky mansions from the Schuylkill River to the Black Horse Pike. The dialogue is realistic, ethnic, sometimes funny, always quick. "Past Due" is simply unadorned hard-hitting crime fiction, more Jim Thompson than John Grisham, all grit and little finesse. Is this a novel you'll remember three months from now? Probably not, but it sure is a lot of fun along the way. Kind of like South Philly.

Philadelphia lawyer Victor Carl is used to doing the wrong things for the right reasons even if comes to dealing with a guilty client. Victor defended Joey 'Cheaps' Parma and got him off the hook, but wannabe hoodlum Parma has one more secret to spring upon his lawyer...Joey calls Victor and asks him about the statue of limitations on murder, only to find out there are none. Joey proceeds to tell his story of killing a young lawyer twenty years earlier.

Hours later, Victor is called to a crime scene in which the victim has his throat slit...the victim is Joey Parma.

Victor agrees to help Joey's mom catch the killer of her son, but in the process finds himself involved in a twisted investigation that has mob men, a missing suitcase filled with money, pictures of a naked woman, a Judge and a vengeful victim back from the dead.

'Past Due' is a well-written, but overly-long thriller that looses steam about half-way through. The complex plot will have some readers turning the pages, but others will find the twists confusing and the chapters involving Victor's father down-right boring.

William Lashner is a talented writer and his Victor Carl series is one of the better legal thrillers on the market, unfortunately his new one abandons most of the legal thrills for that of a procedural drama and it doesn't work.

Nick Gonnella