Frag
Box
A
Herman Jackson Mystery
Richard
A. Thompson
Poisoned
Pen Press (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-59058-678-6 (1590586786)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-678-5 (9781590586785)
Publication Date: November 2009
List Price: $24.95
Synopsis (from
the publisher): Herman Jackson leads a quiet life as a bail bondsman in
St. Paul, nicely distanced from his never-to-be-mentioned past as a
bookie and numbers man in Detroit. But lately his quiet life is just
one damn thing after another. His cash flow is more like a monetary
hemorrhage, a mobster is trying to take over his business, and a couple
of over-zealous Secret Service agents refuse to believe he does not
know the identity of a contracted presidential assassin. To make
matters worse, both the mobster and the agents are dangerously close to
uncovering his criminal past. He’s been dealt worse hands,
but offhand, he can’t remember when.
Charlie Victor is a homeless man, a burnt out Vietnam vet who has no
obvious means of support but always has money when he needs it. He
claims to have a huge secret stash of money, called his frag box. He
keeps it, he says, to hire hit men to kill “bad”
public officials. Jackson thinks he’s a harmless nut case,
though a reliable regular customer. But when Victor is brutally
murdered and both the Secret Service and some mysterious non-uniformed
military types tear apart the homeless community looking for the box,
he thinks again. Then he learns that he is Victor’s sole
legal heir, and the race to find the box suddenly becomes very
personal. It will take him from the dark byways of St. Paul’s
Railroad Island to the snowbound Minnesota Iron Range and ultimately to
a shootout in an abandoned machinery tunnel under the Mississippi River
bluffs.
The key to the box and the murder seems to lie somewhere in
Victor’s time in the jungles of Vietnam. But the more Jackson
probes into that past, the more he keeps running into his own demons
from a wasted youth in riot-torn Detroit. And the closer he gets to the
box, the more his carefully constructed façade of lies
begins to fall apart. Finding it could be more success than he can
afford. It could, in fact, be the death of him.
Review:
Bail bondsman Herman Jackson seems to be the only person who cares when
a homeless man, a Vietnam Vet, is beaten to death in broad daylight,
but the attention soon turns to him when he's listed as the man's sole
beneficiary of a mysterious box, in Frag
Box,
the second mystery in this series by Richard A. Thompson.
Herman sometimes misses his exciting days as a bounty hunter (and
bookie on the side), but for the most part he enjoys his current,
relatively benign life as a bail bondsman in St. Paul. Most of the
people he posts bonds for show up in court when required, including a
semi-recurring client, one Charlie Victor, who pays Herman's fees with
money taken from a "frag box", a holdover from his service in Vietnam.
But then Charlie is murdered. The police investigation seems
perfunctory at best, and no one comes forward with any information as
to why anyone might want to kill Charlie. It comes as something of a
surprise to Herman when a lawyer contacts him, telling him he's the
beneficiary of Charlie's "estate", which consists solely of his frag
box -- current location unknown. Herman quickly concludes that Charlie
was killed for his frag box, and discovers someone will go to any
length to obtain its contents.
Part of the puzzle presented in Frag
Box
is whether Charlie's murder is quickly dismissed by the authorities due
to the fact that he was homeless -- and a Vietnam Vet -- and therefore
unimportant, or because someone is pressuring the police (and media) to
close the case quickly for political (or possibly personal) reasons.
The story is well-constructed, the characters compelling, the murder
mystery itself satisfyingly complex. It's a solid follow-up to the
first mystery in this series, Fiddle
Game. But where Fiddle Game
is more thrilling, Frag Box
is more thoughtful, an interesting contrast in this series of just two
books (to date) that illustrates the range of this author's talent.
Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of Frag Box and to Poisoned Pen Press for providing an ARC of the book for this review.
Review Copyright © 2010 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Have you read Frag Box? How would you rate it?
Mysteries in this series …
Fiddle Game
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover), January 2008
ISBN-10: 1-59058-455-4 (1590584554)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-455-2 (9781590584552)
Frag Box
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover), November 2009
ISBN-10: 1-59058-678-6 (1590586786)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-678-5 (9781590586785)
Omnimystery
keywords for Frag Box
...
Location(s) referenced: St.
Paul, Minnesota.
