This is the second book of this series, and is similar in some ways to the first. The first one had villains that were not really evil, just a bit naive who made some bad decisions; at times it was hard not to hope they were successful when the going got rough.

In this one, it started out similarly; a guy who gets laid off during a downturn in the economy, and can't pay his mortgage and other bills. Of course, he's not totally innocent of getting overextended, but it was the pressures of his family and trying to keep them happy. However, he started losing it somewhere along the way, until he lost all sympathy from everyone. He somehow became really evil, and we only hoped he'd die soon.

It probably wasn't very realistic at all. It's pretty hard to believe a rich accountant could become a ruthless killer and not get caught pretty quickly. But it was a fun and exciting ride, with some humor along the way, at least for a while. I had trouble putting it down for the last third or so, and it went very fast with lost of short chapters. ( )

Will not be buying the third book. I agree with another reviewer that the action does not begin until 3/4 of the book has passed. After the great first book, my expectations were that the main characters would work together solving crimes. Not so, one of the characters spends almost the whole book trying not to participate and we are spectators to his inner dialogue berating himself.

Another reviewer pans the bad guys in the book and I have to agree. There are almost too many bad guys for one story. For those new readers who want to struggle with the boredom of a long build-up, I will not say anything further than there is one bad guy who could have easily been written out with no cost to the book overall. For the discriminating reader, I urge you to give this a miss. ( )

Carter Tomlin looks like a man with everything. He has a job with a huge salary, a beautiful wife and two daughters, he drives a Jaguar, he and owns a huge house in a great neighborhood. When he gets laid off from his job, he makes a snap decision to rob a bank. When he realizes how easy it is to do, he gets a few guns and a couple of partners and turns it into a full-time business. Before long he's doing it because he enjoys the power he feels every time he holds a gun on someone. Of course, it's not long before terrorizing bank tellers isn't enough and his behavior escalates.

Criminal Enterprise has excellent writing, an interesting story and exciting characters. The book has a lot of chapters, but they are quite short and very easy to read. This proves to be a good way to keep the story moving at a fast pace, as well as approach the story from the point of three different narrators: Stevens, Windermere, and Carter Tomlin. Criminal Enterprise is a very entertaining thriller with an engrossing plot and fast paced action sequences. The characters are well written and it's especially fascinating to see the way Carter Tomlin changes throughout the book.

I really enjoyed the first book in the Stevens and Windermere series, the Professionals. Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere work for different agencies but successfully teamed up in the prior book. In this one they are not in contact and seem to work the case from their own angles until halfway through the book. I really like their chemistry and hope they work more together in the next book, Kill Fee. ( )

'Criminal Enterprise', Laukkanen's 2nd in the series, is a very good action story that reprises the pairing of FBI agent Carla Windermere and Minnesota state policeman Kirk Stevens. Unlike 'The Professionals', in this one they weren't officially on the case together- circumstances just sort of made that happen.

The short plot summary is that a fairly young professional is having money problems and on a whim decides to rob a bank. The payoff isn't very much but he gets a rush from the action, escalates his activities to get more money and bigger rushes, and the police begin to track him down.

Since this book was good enough to entice me to knock it out in a couple days, I suppose I liked it pretty well. (SPOILER ALERT!) However, as with his earlier effort, Laukkanen leaves me wondering about the plausibility of a few things: How likely was it that a bland, almost middle-aged 'good guy' would turn into such a monster? How did he so quickly develop the expertise to use the weapons he acquired? How big a coincidence was it that his family life intersects that of the state cop? Had he not ever seen the movie 'Heat' (re: difficulty in pulling off armored car robberies....), and, finally, why did one of the 10 kids in the house at the end not pull out a cellphone (which I can guarantee they all had) and texted or called someone to alert police to the fact that armed bad guys were in the house? (END SPOILER)

So, in conclusion, this was a fine police thriller, well-written with good characters, that had a few holes in its story but was otherwise a good addition to his series. ( )

Fun. Quick read. Not too deep. ( )