Fifty Grand: A Novel of Suspense [Hardcover]

Adrian McKinty (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 28, 2009

This knockout punch of a thriller from a critically acclaimed author follows a young Cuban detective’s quest for vengeance against her father’s killer in a Colorado mountain town

A man is killed in a hit-and-run on a frozen mountain road in the town of Fairview, Colorado. He is an illegal immigrant in a rich Hollywood resort community not unlike Telluride. No one is prosecuted for his death and his case is quietly forgotten.

Six months later another illegal makes a treacherous run across the border. Barely escaping with her life and sanity intact, she finds work as a maid with one of the employment agencies in Fairview. Secretly, she begins to investigate the shadowy collision that left her father dead.

The maid isn’t a maid. And she’s not Mexican, either. She’s Detective Mercado, a police officer from Havana, and she’s looking for answers: Who killed her father? Was it one of the smooth- talking Hollywood types? Was it a minion of the terrifying county sheriff? And why was her father, a celebrated defector to the United States, hiding in Colorado as the town ratcatcher?

Adrian McKinty’s live-wire prose crackles with intensity as we follow Mercado through the swells of emotion and violence that lead up to a final shocking confrontation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Irish crime writer McKinty (The Bloomsday Dead) delivers an intelligent novel of suspense about cultural identity. After a hit-and-run driver kills Alberto Suarez, a Cuban defector who's been working as a rodent exterminator in Fairview, Colo., his daughter, Mercado, a talented young Havana cop, feels duty bound to avenge his death. She obtains a visa to Mexico City under a false pretext and later slips across the U.S. border to get to Fairview, which has become the happening place for the Hollywood cognoscenti. Since someone has to clean up after the wild parties, drugs and general debauchery that keep the town's underground economy bustling, Mercado joins the silent community of illegal workers living on Wetback Mountain. As she investigates her father's death, she discovers that his secrets, like those of Fairview itself, were far more extensive than she could have realized. In trademark fashion, McKinty winds up his provocative tale with a violent and memorable final act. (May)
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From Booklist

Changing direction from his celebrated Forsythe trilogy, starring an Irish immigrant who runs afoul of the New York Mob, McKinty offers a hard-edged noir about a female police detective from Cuba who travels illegally to Fairview, Colorado, hoping to make sense of her father’s death in an apparent hit-and-run on a frozen mountain road. Beginning with a gripping set piece in which Detective Mercado, disguised as a man, smuggles herself across the Mexican border and into the U.S., the novel jumps between Mercado’s under-the-radar investigation (Why was her father, a celebrated Cuban defector, posing as a Mexican immigrant?) and flashbacks to her own life in Cuba before Dad abandoned the family. Posing as an illegal maid from Mexico, Mercado infiltrates a group of supercilious Hollywood types who may hold the answers, all the while constructing a macabre revenge plan. McKinty tightens the screws on his heroine effectively, forcing her into a classic noir conundrum from which there appears to be no escape. An impeccably constructed thriller supported by a cast of finely rounded, Elmore Leonard–like characters. --Bill Ott

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; First Edition edition (April 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805089004
• ISBN-13: 978-0805089004
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #950,877 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific thriller, McKinty's best yet May 12, 2009

By Declan J. Burke

Format:Hardcover

Taking its title from a Hemingway short story, Adrian McKinty's FIFTY GRAND opens in Cuba before moving on, via Mexico, to Colorado, as a Cuban cop, Hernandez, goes illegally undercover in the US to investigate her father's death. The Hemingway homage is a brave one, inviting ridicule and accusations of hubris, but McKinty has long been purveying a blend of muscular lyricism in which collide the brutalities of the crime novel and a knowing, self-effacing literary style.
His sixth novel for adults (he also writes the `Lighthouse' series for children), FIFTY GRAND offers a challenging conceit, which is to put the tough, spare rhythms associated with classic hard-boiled novels (think Hemingway himself, James Ellroy, James Cain) into the mind of a first-person female protagonist. The result is an incendiary, adrenalin-fuelled thriller, but one that also functions as a blackly hilarious social satire of the skewed values of pre-Obama America, as Hernandez, in the role of exploited illegal immigrant, infiltrates the glitzy world of Colorado's ski-resort set, cleaning up the mess left behind by Hollywood`s jet-set.
Most successful of all, however, is McKinty's ability to slip inside Hernandez's skin. The undercover Hernandez is thrown back on her own resources as she investigates her father's death and brings those responsible to a very particular kind of justice, without recourse to conventional resources. As vulnerable as she is tough, as scared as she is determined, as fragile as she is lethal, she makes for a highly unusual, creepily authentic and utterly compelling anti-heroine.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Powerful, Thrilling Novel by an Emerging Superstar April 29, 2009

By CavalierEsq

Format:Hardcover

I'd been a fan of McKinty's work since I first read DEAD I WELL MAY BE (2003). His "Dead Trilogy," starring anti-hero Michael Forsythe was, in my view, the best character-driven series of the decade. So I was a bit disappointed to learn that his latest would be a standalone. I'm happy to report that my concerns were completely unfounded. This book is his best to date.

I won't rehash the plot here (you can read about it above), but I will say that this book has some of the most developed, believable, and identifiable characters that you'll see in this genre. Mercado is one of the most well drawn female protagonists I've encountered, period. The ancillary characters (in particular Mercado's boss and her young travel companion) are perfectly rendered and add to the storyline, rather than distract from it. In a book of this sort, the characters are typically the key - here, they're pitch perfect.

The other notable character in this book is Cuba itself. Mercado's Cuban heritage, and her ties to her homeland (and its attendant paranoia, poverty, and crime) colors everything in the story and lends itself both to her actions and her thoughts throughout her journey. The flashbacks peppered throughout the book (which take place in Cuba prior to Mercado's departure for the US) provide contrast between the Cuban mentality and geography and that of the US. It's clear that McKinty spent significant time in Cuba while writing FIFTY GRAND - the Cuban backdrop is just that well done.

In all, this should be the book that propels McKinty beyond his current core fanbase and takes him mainstream. Fans of his prior books will love it, and for those new to McKinty, it provides a perfect place to start. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Lean and mean, a superb thriller May 7, 2009

By Wilson Kingston

Format:Hardcover

Like the book, I'll keep this short and sweet.

"Fifty Grand" is an excellent novel. Well paced, and meticulously detailed, it grabbed me from the opening chapter. McKinty presents us with a well rounded, deeply emotional protagonist, and a series of equally fleshed out villains that create a unique twist on the age-old revenge tale.

Without giving too much away McKinty manages to paint the picture of a life through memories in vivid fashion without ever detracting from the main plot. In fact, the use of flashbacks and flashforwards is a trait which would be a gimmick for most other authors, but it always seems to work with McKinty.

Highly recommended if you like your thrillers with a dash of the literary or you know, enjoy character development.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars How to be a good maid in Colorado May 5, 2009

By Seana Graham

Format:Hardcover

It remains something of a mystery to me why McKinty isn't better known here. True, he hails from Northern Ireland, but all the books I've read of his have big American themes, particularly about having outsider status in the world's most powerful country. He worked it from the Irish angle in his stunning Michael Forsythe trilogy, and now he comes at it again from a country with more troubled relations to our own--Cuba. This book should be hitting with a bang right now as everyone who reads the newspapers re-evaluates our relation to Cuba, but in fact the mainstream media seems not to have picked up on its up to the minute relevance.

Others have gone into the plot structure. I am impressed with the pared down prose, which is perfect for a novel of vengeance, with its single-minded, knifepoint focus. Knowing from his other books that McKinty writes it this way by choice rather than necessity, I found that the more deadpan tone made it all the more breathtaking in the climactic moments when his natural gift for lyricism is finally allowed to break through.

I am probably making this more talky than it needs to be, though. You don't have to care one whit about the rich and the poor, the powerful and the invisible to enjoy this book. Pick it up and start right in. You are in for a thrilling ride.