What
should Mickey Whalen do after he drops anchor on a desolate key off the
Florida coast and meets Rose, a platinum –blonde bombshell, calmly
sitting on a suitcase filled with money, and peeling off her stockings
and a ritzy summer dress. She was a little too hardboiled for the coy
routine and wants to know if he can make Cuba in his boat. Should he
find her presence there all too disconcerting? Should he realize that a
babe like this on the run from the law or the mob is going to tie him up
in knots and screw up his life?
Should he run for the hills cause this dame is plain crazy and she’s going to make him crazy as well? Or should he welcome her aboard and make a life with her for nine months on a tiny inlet on one of the Cayman Islands and accede to her wishes never to be brought into a city again, never to go anywhere she could be spotted? Should Mickey ever get comfortable or should he always be surprised to find her there when he returned? After all, “how many men come home to see a half-naked movie queen smiling at them from their bed?”
In “Blonde Bait,” Ed Lacy offers the reader a Caribbean adventure of boats and blondes and booze and of a man who can’t just lie back under the sun and wait for the money to run out, but has to poke around and get some answers. The first half of the book is a quiet, gentle sunset and flows at a relaxed pace, that is, until Mickey starts getting some answers to the questions that are bugging him about Rose, answers he may not have really wanted to get.
The second half of the book is a wild chase through the streets of New York and New Jersey with all kinds of post-WWII international intrigue thrown in. Lacy did a good job of keeping the solution to the mystery under wraps until the very end of the book. The whole thing falls together and works well. An enjoyable thriller.
Should he run for the hills cause this dame is plain crazy and she’s going to make him crazy as well? Or should he welcome her aboard and make a life with her for nine months on a tiny inlet on one of the Cayman Islands and accede to her wishes never to be brought into a city again, never to go anywhere she could be spotted? Should Mickey ever get comfortable or should he always be surprised to find her there when he returned? After all, “how many men come home to see a half-naked movie queen smiling at them from their bed?”
In “Blonde Bait,” Ed Lacy offers the reader a Caribbean adventure of boats and blondes and booze and of a man who can’t just lie back under the sun and wait for the money to run out, but has to poke around and get some answers. The first half of the book is a quiet, gentle sunset and flows at a relaxed pace, that is, until Mickey starts getting some answers to the questions that are bugging him about Rose, answers he may not have really wanted to get.
The second half of the book is a wild chase through the streets of New York and New Jersey with all kinds of post-WWII international intrigue thrown in. Lacy did a good job of keeping the solution to the mystery under wraps until the very end of the book. The whole thing falls together and works well. An enjoyable thriller.
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