An explosion outside his speakeasy draws Jimmy into a life-or-death chase
Young Jimmy Quinn is delivering a bribe for the infamous racketeer Arnold Rothstein when a bomb goes off on Wall Street, killing thirty people and scaring every banker in the city right down to his spats. Twelve years later, Rothstein is dead, and Jimmy is doing his best to stay out of trouble, running a quiet little Manhattan speakeasy. At a particularly bad moment for him and his favorite waitress, a blast rocks the alley outside and draws him right back into the madness of a dozen years ago.
That morning, a strange package came in with his liquor shipment: four plain books filled with cryptic numbers. It seems the motive behind this bombing may have been the same as that behind the explosion on Wall Street more than a decade ago: money. The incident sets Jimmy off on a mad race to stay out of the line of fire, taking him from the heights of the Chrysler Building to the depths of New York’s underworld.
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“Mayo spins several clever yarns off this premise as the quick-witted Jimmy hustles to keep one step ahead of the crowd.” —
Publishers Weekly“The second Quinn novel follows the template of the first (Jimmy the Stick, 2012): multiple plot complications combined with Jimmy’s fascinating tales of real crimes and criminals during the 1920s and ’30s.” —Booklist “[Mayo] persuasively portrays such real-life mobsters as Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano in a tale sure to appeal to fans of Max Allan Collins’s gangster historicals.” —
Publishers Weekly on
Jimmy the Stick “Imagine an Agatha Christie country-house murder mystery soaked in booze and violence, with the detective played as a cold, pragmatic street fighter instead of some effete Belgian fop. The expected traditional shenanigans unfold (there’s even a hidden room!), albeit in a rather hardboiled and occasionally bloody fashion, but the solution is clever and fair. What really sticks, however, is the film critic and first-time novelist’s muscular way with character and plot, and particularly Jimmy’s way with words.” —
Mystery Scene on
Jimmy the Stick
