The Perpetrators [Paperback]

Gary Phillips (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2002

With the clock ticking, the story jumps off in the border town of Tijuana, Mexico. A smooth cat who labels himself an expeditor must survive a gauntlet of hitters and freaks to deliver his client alive to their destination. She's a high maintenance drug queen who's made a deal with the top cop in California's state capitol, Sacramento. By all means of transportation and dodging devastation, and busting some heads themselves, the two make their way north while behind-the-scenes machinations go down. Battered but not out, our man completes his assignment only to find out all ain't what it seems -- but then, he's not getting two million just to look good. And handling fools, no matter how they trip, comes with the territory.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Marley is an expeditor. He moves stuff--or people, if need be--from one location to another. He has 24 hours to move Lina Guzman, heiress to a Mexican drug fortune, from Tijuana into the U.S. What should be a cruise-control Sunday drive turns into a NASCAR-meets-the-WWF spectacle seasoned with enough weaponry to fuel a Third-World insurrection. Chief among the evildoers out to foil Marley is Samson Twelvetrees, who wants Guzman's empire for himself. Stir in corrupt government officials, padded cops, and assorted armed thugs with murky motives, and we have what amounts to a literary video game. In the center of the maelstrom are Marley and Lina, who can't find the time to catalyze their obvious chemistry because they are too busy shooting, punching, kicking, and stabbing. The dialogue between the two is in the best tradition of Tracy-Hepburn distilled to its underlying, four-letter essence. This is no-frills fun for those who like their crime novels brimming with nonstop action and scented with cordite. Here's hoping Marley reloads for another adventure in the future. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"Gary Phillips is my kind of writer and Ivan Monk my kind of detective....An unbeatable combination." -- Sara Paretsky

"In any game that's high-rise, high-pressure, and high stakes, I want Martha Chainey and Gary Phillips on my side." -- S. J. Rozan, author, Stone Quarry

"Ivan Monk takes on a corrupt world. He...makes us feel that he's waging a war for our own salvation." -- Walter Mosely, author, Devil in a Blue Dress

"Seen through the prose of Gary Phillips, L.A. seems a new and much more interesting place." -- Tom Nolan

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Uglytown Productions (August 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0966347374
• ISBN-13: 978-0966347371
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,568,165 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Perpetrators just doesn't STOP!!, August 16, 2002

By 

Chip Mosher (Culver City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Perpetrators (Paperback)

Ohmigod! This book is as close to a roller coaster as you can get. It doesn't quit. Marley is one mean mother (shut your mouth) and Phillips abuses his main character through a tortuous ride up from Tijuana to Sacramento with more action packed adventures than any Hollywood blockbuster has served up in many a summer. Buy this book. Read it. Make others buy it. Pass it along. Leave it at bus stops. IT IS THIS SUMMERS MUST READ BOOK!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fast, furious and very violent, April 4, 2004

By 

Untouchable (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Perpetrators (Paperback)

THE PERPETRATORS is a full-on thrill ride of violence from Tijuana, Mexico to Sacramento, California following the escapades of Lina Guzman, a drug cartel queen and Marley, her bodyguard who is given the title throughout the book as her expeditor.

The story starts in a hotel room in Tijuana with Marley in a life or death struggle with a knife-wielding attacker, whom Lina calmly dispatches, shooting the attacker with a silenced pistol. Already by this stage (and I'm talking 1 page, if that) the dialogue is dominated with pure gangster slang taken from the classic hardboiled novels from the 1930s and 40s. One full-on action scene, dominated by all sorts of violence and profanities and you just know it's not going to let up.

As Marley and Lina leave Tijuana on their way towards Sacramento we find out that she's a South American drug queen who is off to make a deal with a crooked politician that should see her distribution channels open up and he's her hired bodyguard. Trying to stop her is the man named Samson Twelvetrees who seems to have an endless supply of assassins and weapons at his disposal and so determined is he to stop Lina from making her meeting, he is prepared to throw everything at her.

The wild ride is punctuated with hair-raising car chases, motel room ambushes, helicopter dodgems and any number of shoot-outs. Bad guys are cut down with monotonous regularity and the good guys escape by the skinniest skin of their teeth. As you can probably tell, the story is blindingly spare in its narrative, short on intricate plot detail and characterisation and long on outlandish situations involving heavy artillery.

Be prepared for incredibly unrealistic dialogue full of every bad gangsta cliché ever uttered. I don't think there was a bad guy dispatched without receiving some sort of verbal send-off by Marley. (Thank goodness he never quite stooped to "Hasta la vista, baby" but I'm sure it must have crossed his mind once or twice).

Interspersed throughout the entire book are rough illustrations helping to add to the rough and ready style of the book. The illustrations depict either a map of the scene of the latest skirmish somewhere along the southern California landscape or a scene that takes place there, such as a car screeching to a halt (complete with the word "screech"). While not exactly adding any value to the story, the roughness of the illustrations suggest they were done in a hurry almost as if the illustrator was attempting to keep up with the extreme pace of the story.

Now, you can be forgiven for assuming that I didn't enjoy this book, but you'd be dead wrong. As a fan of the old detective classics made famous by Dashiell Hammett, Ross MacDonald, Mickey Spillane and the like, I loved every minute of it. Of course, I treated it as a homage to those classics and the hardboiled genre in general. Just how much of a homage to hardboiled was it? Well, when Marley used a false identity, two of his choices were as Mr Stark and Mr Pelecanos, coincidence or a tip of the hat?

It's graphically violent, perhaps even cartoonish, full of foul language with the occasional crude sex scene thrown in for good measure. But it is also a fast and furious ride that is guaranteed to entertain as long as you are a fan of the old pulp-fiction style crime story.

4.0 out of 5 stars Serious Fun, November 6, 2011

By 

J.D. Rhoades (North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Perpetrators (Kindle Edition)

Gary Phillips cuts right to the chase--literally--in The Perpetrators. There's no slow buildup; you're dropped right into the middle of a running battle as "expediter" named Marley strives to get the daughter of a deceased drug kingpin from Tijuana to Sacramento for a payoff of a million dollars. Opposing them are some bizarre hitters, including a pair of sadistic wannabe vampires and a trio of gun wielding females who have their own history with our smooth, sharp-dressed hero. Don't expect a lot of deep meaning or character development. Do expect a whole lot of wild, over the top fun.