Lights Out! - A heist thriller involving the Mafia
Bain has given us a lovely caper novel, an old-fashioned story told in old-fashioned prose—slower moving than we’re used to, perhaps, though not a bit worse for it. Blurb writers justifiably compare it to Donald Westlake’s caper novels, but it also suggests the work of such noncrime writers as Louis Auchincloss. Carlton Smythe, 54, is married to a woman with a ton of money. He’s trapped and frantic with boredom. His wife’s body, when they make love, is “clammy,” and she has stubby toes. On business in Argentina, he meets Gina, who inspires rather different adjectives. Smythe concocts a scheme that will net him enough to live forever with Gina—a simple matter of timing electrical blackouts and selling the info to crime lords. The suspense builds, and we yield to it. Smythe is a nice guy, and he deserves Gina; we cheer him on, but we fear we know what’s coming. Is this a sleazy version of Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence, where big money always wins? The reader feels the shock of the ending, but not as much as Smythe does. --Don Crinklaw