But that’s how much Ken Swift’s estranged daughter, Margaux,
suddenly demanded of him. She claimed that it was payback
for all the years he was absent. She said it was a small
price to pay for abandoning her. And then, just in case he
had no plans to give her the cash, she uttered a name that
he never wanted to hear again.
It was a name that went far into his history, one that tied
him to his boss, San Bernardino, who told Swift what to do
and where to be. San Bernardino was why Swift put Margaux
off: he had business to take care of on the swanky side of
town. Richard Garrett owed somebody some money that he
wasn’t paying, and Swift and his best friend, Joe Ellis,
were told to take care of the problem.
But a quick visit to Garrett’s mansion opened a world of
issues that Swift didn’t need. Joe Ellis, an “instigator”
and woman-magnet, flirted with Garrett’s wife, which spun
Garrett into a rage. Though Garrett promised to have the
money to San Bernardino by that night, Ken Swift sensed that
that wasn’t the last they’d see of him.
It wasn’t as if Swift couldn’t use more money himself.
Without that 50 grand, Margaux was threatening to take the
secret name to the police. Margaux’s mother was back in the
States from Africa, and Swift realized that he was still in
love with Jimi Lee. All this made him forget his
girlfriend’s birthday, and Rachel Redman was threatening to
return to her Russian lover. Swift was up to his neck in
women with problems – a neck that was stuck far enough out
to be vulnerable to attack…
One strong indicator of a good book is how eager you are to
return it. Bad Men and Wicked Women surely fills that
bill.
Don’t expect that feeling immediately, though. Author Eric
Jerome Dickey takes his time getting to the point here;
there’s plenty of fluff-dialogue in this tale that doesn’t
do much but fill pages, and some that screams “TMI.”
We don’t, for instance, need several pages on one
character’s intestinal problems.
What we do need is action, and it arrives in a
page-turning fury that handily douses the superfluousness
that precedes it. Its presence is like getting your back
scratched: it puts you in a mood and you don’t want it to
end. Indeed, larger-than-life scenarios are near-hallmarks
in a Dickey novel, and nobody does them better.
Yes, there’s trash, flash, and violence in this book but you
shouldn’t be surprised. You wouldn’t want it any other way,
in fact, because Bad Men and Wicked Women is thick
with thrills. |