The Fall Guy by Chris Quinton - Release Day Review

42 pages / 12911 pages

Buy links: Amazon US | Amazon UK

Available in KU

Blurb

In 1920s New York, Pinkerton Agent John Brady is assigned to a brutal robbery/kidnapping, an open and shut case with an obvious culprit - but nothing and no one are what they seem.

Small-time crook Cesare Donati has the perfect getaway: a transatlantic cruise ship. When Brady turns up at his cabin door, Cesare knows he is out of options until they reach England.

Will London be a safe haven or a place of reckoning?

Review

For a short story, The Fall Guy delivered a lot and what's more, I thoroughly enjoyed all of it.

John Brady is a most wonderful main character. He may appear rather gruff and short at first glance, but we soon discover there’s a lot more to him than the stereo-typical cynical gumshoe and that his heart is most definitely in the right place. Cesare Donati is at least as intriguing as John, and, as John soon discovers, Cesare also amounts to a lot more than the sum of his parts. The spark between these two men is obvious from the start, even if, at that moment, neither man knows for sure whether or not the other can be trusted.

As the blurb suggests, nothing in this story is as it at first appears, and the tension in this story doesn’t so much lie in the ‘who dunnit’ but more in the ‘will our heroes be able to stay safe’. In fact, this story is probably more about how John and Cesare meet and end up as partners (in more ways than one, I’ll have you know) than about solving a mystery. However, that doesn’t mean the story is either boring or lacking tension. Reading about their time in London was a bit like waiting for the axe to fall; you know it’s going to happen, but you’re just not sure when.

I love how the author managed to highlight cultural and linguistic differences between prohibition-era New York and London in 1920, without ever stressing them or being obvious about it. And John wondering about Cockney rhyming slang just made me smile.

 “Who would take a butcher’s hook at a store window?”

So, I loved the story, I loved the setting, I loved the connection between John and Cesare, and I’m over the moon that when I finished the story I was left with the impression that I’d just read the start of something. I can only hope that Chris Quinton will indeed decide to send John and Cesare on future adventures. I can’t wait to spend more time with them.