The
Fitzgerald Ruse
A
Sam
Blackman Mystery
Mark
de Castrique
Poisoned
Pen Press (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-59058-629-8 (1590586298)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-629-7 (9781590586297)
Publication Date: August 2009
List Price: $24.95
Synopsis (from
the publisher): Former Chief Warrant Office and amputee Sam Blackman
and his partner, Nakayla Robertson, are opening a detective agency.
They have high hopes that the thriving mountain region will provide a
steady stream of cases.
Their first client, a quirky elderly woman in a retirement community,
makes a strange request. She wants Sam to right a wrong she committed
over seventy years ago. Her victim: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her crime:
stealing a manuscript when Fitzgerald resided in the stately Grove Park
Inn. Sam's task seems simple enough: retrieve the woman's lockbox and
deliver the manuscript to Fitzgerald's heirs.
But nothing is simple for Sam. The lockbox is sealed with a swastika, a
symbol his client insists predates the Nazis and reflects a scene from The Great Gatsby.
Then a security
guard is killed and the lockbox disappears. Not only has his first
investigation triggered a murder, Sam's final military case has
followed him from Iraq and neither he nor anyone close to him is safe.
Are the mysteries connected? Or is one a ruse luring him into the
crosshairs of his enemies?
Review:
Mark de
Castrique's second mystery with Sam Blackman, The Fitzgerald Ruse,
has the Iraqi
War veteran juggling two threats, one dating from before World War II
and other much more recent.
Blackman and his new partner, Nakayla Robertson, have just opened a new
private investigation agency when they get their first case: an elderly
woman wants them to retrieve and return a manuscript she admits she
stole from a hotel room in which F. Scott Fitzgerald stayed in the
1930s to his rightful heirs. "There's no crime worse than betrayal,"
she says. "A betrayal has to involve trust, even love. I betrayed Mr.
Fitzgerald and I'm counting on you to make it right." It seems simple
enough. Blackman gets a lockbox from a bank and stores it overnight in
his new office. It's an ordinary lockbox, but with an extraordinary
lead seal: a swastika. During the night, however, a security guard is
killed and the lockbox stolen. The next day Blackman's buddy from the
war shows up to warn him that a members of a rogue military operation
who were responsible for the death of their two partners in Iraq, which
also caused Blackman to lose part of his leg, think that he has a
fortune stolen from the Iraqis ... and they want it. Blackman hasn't
stolen anything, but he did recently receive several million dollars in
a wrongful death settlement from an insurance company after his parents
were killed. It is possible these men are confusing an insurance
settlement with stolen money? And how does a pre-World War II era
lockbox fit into this?
Nakayla sums up the plot of The
Fitzgerald Ruse quite
succinctly: "One, we have a mysterious
lockbox with a swastika. Two, a son who despises his father and works
next to the office where a guard was murdered and the lockbox stolen.
Three, the father who died in 1944 after attending a part for German
POWs, and four, the father's sister who now has nearly five million
dollars and knows a secret about the missing lockbox she wants to keep
hidden. And last, but not least, a gang of thieves in Iraq who think
you've ripped off their fortune, who probably know you've set up an
offshore account, and will torture you before killing you. Am I leaving
anything out?" It may seem overly complicated, but the author handles
these disparate plot elements quite well. And those familiar with the
plot and resolution of the first book in the series will likely have a
greater appreciation of Blackman's financial situation than newcomers.
There's a lot of intentional misdirection here, but the clues as to who
did what to whom and when are liberally sprinkled throughout, allowing
the perceptive reader to figure it all at about the same time as
Blackman. The titular ruse is, in reality, a minor plot point, which is
a bit of a disappointment since a clever literary deception or gambit
would have really elevated the book into the top tier. Still, the story
is well crafted, and a worthy and most satisfying successor to the
exceptional first book in this series.
Special thanks to Poisoned Pen Press for providing an ARC of The Fitzgerald Ruse for this review.
Review Copyright © 2009 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Have you read The Fitzgerald Ruse? How would you rate it?
Mysteries in this series ...
Blackman's Coffin
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover), June 2008
ISBN-10: 1-59058-517-8 (1590585178)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-517-7 (9781590585177)
The Fitzgerald Ruse
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover), August 2009
ISBN-10: 1-59058-629-8 (1590586298)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-629-7 (9781590586297)
Omnimystery
keywords for The Fitzgerald Ruse
...
Location(s) referenced: Asheville, North
Carolina.
