Adam Abramowitz

Meet Zesty Meyers - Boston's fastest bike messenger. He is high more often than not, lives in an industrial loft and never misses a delivery. At least until we meet him anyway - because the first delivery we see is the first one he ends up not making - partially because he gets hit by a car and partially because the package explodes - papering the street with money. And things go downhill from there.

As it turns out, Zesty has a lot of experience with the authorities - his father is the format deal-maker and cards king of Boston (now retired and being slowed down by early-onset Alzheimer that eats his memory faster and faster), his mother is in Boston FBI most wanted list because of a bank robbery and his brother Zero has a moving business that is best described as shady (or so everyone believes anyway). On top of everything Boston is in the middle of another infrastructure project (the Big Dig) and long buried bodies emerge all the time - both literally and figuratively. And when his exploding pack of money gets tied to a bank robbery from a few day before than and the homicide detectives show up in his hospital room, it looks like his day won't improve much and that the car smashing his bike may have been the highlight of the day actually. The music that he starts hearing out from nowhere does not help much either.

And in parallel, we get his father's story - both the current one and the past one - seemingly unrelated. If you had read enough thrillers, you know that there is not a chance it to remain unconnected. But even knowing it is coming, some of the ways it get connected are surprising enough - and Abramowitz manages to surprise.

It is not a perfect novel - there are parts that probably should have been cut and in some places the story almost falls apart. But the end is worth it - while it becomes clear where the current days story is going pretty quickly, it is the past that makes the story finally click - exposing even more of those long buried bodies - this time just figuratively. Although there are real bodies as well - it is a violent novel.… (mehr)