Customer Reviews

Smoked

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Maine author Patrick Quinlan brings some real bad actors - most, but not all of them, from New York - to Portland in this first novel, a crackling, non-stop action thriller with talented, likable protagonists and a vivid sense of place.

The story opens with one of the protagonists, lovely 25-year-old Lola Bell, about to be raped during what she thought was a modeling-job audition. But Lola was raped once before as a teenager in the Chicago projects, and she swore it would never happen again. Now, in an office on Congress Street, her nine years of martial arts training finally get a work out. When the breathless scene is done two guys who really deserve it lie bleeding on the floor, their cameras smashed, Lola exhilarated.

Lola's roommate thinks she should go to the police or, failing that, at least tell her boyfriend, aging Smoke Dugan, a gentle man in his 50s who walks with a cane. But Lola decides to keep the excitement to herself, despite the fact that these guys have her address.

Smoke has his own secrets. An arsonist and bomb maker from New York who was always careful never to kill anyone, his last bomb was used to bring down a passenger-packed jet. Heartsick, he kills the mafia boss responsible, steals $2.5 million from him, and flees to a quiet life in Portland. But he knows time is running out.

Denny Cruz is a hit man with scary eyes. He works alone so it makes him nervous that two young punks have been sent with him to Portland. Do the mob boys know he's getting tired, thinking of the impossible - retirement? The younger boys get real joy out of killing - though one prefers stealing cars, not that he'd admit it.

The only reason Smoke survives his first encounter with this charming trio is their intent to capture him alive and find out where the money is hidden. His own careful planning and quick wits do the rest. But the hit men know about Lola and karate kicks can't save her this time - or her librarian roommate, a nice girl pining for adventure. The hit men snatch the girls and tell Smoke to give himself up or they die.

There's only one problem. Lola's beaten camera boys arrived on the scene in time to see Lola and her friend shoved into the trunk and they've decided to follow and get in on the action.

Quinlan packs enough twists and turns into this zany chase to keep your pulse pounding. He switches viewpoints among all the characters and gives even the worst of them at least a glimmer of human feeling. His flair for character is as quick and stylish as his deft hand with action and plot. While not every event is 100 percent believable (starting with street-smart Lola being taken in by a couple of dressed-up trailer trash) it's all so clever and fast you'll be delighted to find he leaves room for a sequel.

--Portsmouth Herald

Smoke Dugan is living a life in hiding. As a former explosives expert to the mob, he is on the lam for stealing 2.5 million dollars from a mob boss before killing him. But Smoke is a good guy. He was angry because the bomb he created was used to bring down a commercial airline. Now, he is living in Portland Maine and has a girlfriend Lola Bell. The mob has caught up with Smoke in the form of a trio of deadly hitmen. Lola could be used as a pawn- so they think. They are just not aware that she is well versed in the area of martial arts. What ensues is a thrilling semi-comic bloodbath.
SMOKED is all about the characters in the same vein as an Elmore Leonard novel. Sure there is a decent and rollicking plot. The strength is the portrayals of both the bad and the good as real people each with their own set of problems. They all have great depth so that even the most wicked come off as semi-human instead of the usual cartoonish stereotypes. From the reader's standpoint the book is pure fun. The author truly knows how to pace his stories. This is an impressive debut and comes well recommended.

"Smoke" Dugan is nearly 60 years old. He's a retired criminal - a bomber - walks with a limp, and lives in a rundown basement apartment in out-of-the way Portland, Maine. The voluptuous Lola Bell is his girlfriend - a twenty-something stunner with supermodel looks and Special Forces caliber martial arts skills. So I guess this is why they call it "fiction"?

But setting aside some of the base incredulity, Patrick Quinlan spins a fast paced and mostly entertaining novel about the life that Smoke left behind catching up with him. Getting fast out the gate with a memorable scene where a bikini-clad Lola wups up on two good ole boys twice her size, the action never stops as Smoke limps and Lola karate kicks their way through mob hit men and disgruntled pornographers out to seek revenge and $2.5M of dirty cash that Smoke appropriated years before. If not credible, the cast is colorful - including Moss, a gorilla-sized thug who has duct tape, handcuffs, three hundred pounds of muscle, and a walnut-sized brain, at his disposal. In building this passable thriller, Quinlan leaves a few loose ends along the way, rushing to a premature climax that left me only half full. But setting aside a few flaws, "Smoked" is a fun read that will pass time on a long flight or a lazy afternoon.

New York mob king Big Vito and his competitive peers employ James "Smoke" Duggan, as his bomb maker of choice because the guy is better than DOD with his precision so that only the target dead. However, Smoke finds one objective holding 2.5 million dollars of Big Vito's loot and decides that would make a nice down payment on a new life. He absconds with the money and relocates to Portland, Maine knowing that Big Vito will send his toughest thugs after him if found.

Vito uses some sick sadistic SOBs, but for Smoke he sends his craziest. Denny "Murderous Eyes" Cruz, Stick and Moss are coming to kill Smoke after they remove his eyes and otherwise torture and mutilate him. As a bonus they will also rape his girlfriend Lola in front of him before maiming her. However, Denny sees Smoke as a hero who escaped the literally dead end of their occupation for the good life of luxury with a sexy woman and considers how he can get a piece of that instead of camaraderie with killing apes who will probably come for his killer eyes one at a time one day.

This action packed crime thriller starts off with plenty of Smoke that leads to a delightful abundance of fire until the climatic confrontation, but throughout contains a wonderful contrast between the residents and regular visitors to Portland and the thug invasion. Not surprisingly readers will root for Smoke and Lola to win, but also want Denny to convert. Though graphically flowing in blood, fans of hard core tales will want to read this battle between criminals as the outcome remains in doubt (with the Vito mob having the overwhelming edge) until the final twist.

Harriet Klausner

It didn't stink but this guy is definitely no Elmore Leonard.

The story was OK but the writing kind of got in the way for me.
Too much poor sentence structure & don't even get me started on the spelling errors.
In addition; a lot of the scenes were just a bit too clumsy for my taste.

It was worth 99 cents but I'd feel cheated if I'd paid $1.99 so get it now.

I'd previous stumbled upon this author with his third novel Drop Off which is actually a sequel to this one. Not that all the major plot events aren't wrapped up nicely in Smoked, it's just that it leaves room for a sequel. The only reason I even realised I'd read the sequel was that because the other book was so good, that I remembered the main character and thought, hey this (I won't mention which character) sounds like the character from that one. I've checked and it is.

Back to Smoked, and what a great novel it is. Quinlan writes in a style that somewhere between Bill Fitzhugh/Carl Hiaasen type writing but not quite as heavy on the bloodshed as say Charlie Huston. Characters that need to get their comeuppance by the final pages, and as a reader you're taken on one hell of a ride before you get there.

Basic plot is Smoke, a bomb maker who had made quite a nice life for himself from the proceeds of the vaults he'd blown over the years decided to retire. Not because the police were closing in but because he learnt the mob who had hired his skills to make a bomb had used it to bring down an airliner full of innocent people because it was the easiest way to kill one guy under protection on board. Smoke committed his only ever murder (the mob boss) and fled to Portland, Maine, with $2.5 million dollars of mob money he found at the scene. Now Smoke who is a crippled old man has a young hot 25 year old girlfriend, an apartment full of cats and a neighbour who does all his gardening in return for letting her plant vegetables in his yard.

However Lola, Smoke's girlfriend has just beat and made enemies of two trailer trash rapists. Unbeknownst to Smoke she has mad martial arts skills that she developed to due ensure that very thing never happened to her again. Lola or her librarian roommate Pamela, have no idea of Smoke's past either. However a hit man with a scar named Cruz does, he likes to work alone but has been burdened with Moss, an ape sized thug with a high opinion of himself and fingers a car thief whose missing three fingers due to past stupidity. Cruz's mission is to torture and bring Smoke back to the mob in New York, and if it's still around, bring the money back too.

If you're looking for a really well-written book full of action AND suspense, this is the book for you. The characters are very well-drawn and the outcome is never certain. Moss is a grinning sociopath who enjoys hurting people. Lola, on the other hand, is a lovely young woman who was viciously assaulted as a young girl. She is determined to never be on the wrong end of an assault again. There are many others involved in this high-stakes cat and mouse game and I enjoyed it immensely and highly recommend it.

Is there life outside the Mob without going into a witness protection program? Smoked makes the case for criminals being able to reform at least to the extent of foregoing crime (except to escape Mob killers) in favor of retirement with beautiful young women. As you can see the book's theme is really about fantasy: confronting and overcoming almost demonic killers, being able to retire young, enjoying an uncomplicated love life, and having freedom to live as you like. Those in favor of some escapist fiction will feel rewarded by Smoked.

What makes the book rise above the average is its focus on the foolishness and foibles of bad guys, a quality that will remind you of Elmore Leonard's stories about stupid crooks in Detroit. The main twist here is that the criminals are either stone killers or physically developed people who love using their size and strength against others.

On the anti-hero side, you have a few surprises too. James "Smoke" Duggan (born Wally O'Malley) is sixtyish and a cripple who needs a cane. He uses his brains and bomb-making abilities to offset his physical limitations. Smoke's twenty-five-year-old girl friend, Lola Bell, makes up for his lack of physical toughness with her martial arts which are honed to prevent a repetition of being raped as a teenager. Both are secretive . . . which accounts for why Smoke doesn't know that she almost suffered a recurrence during a "modeling" audition . . . and why Lola doesn't know that Smoke used to work for the Mob and helped kill dozens on a plane.

Into their path come the stone-cold killer, Denny Cruz, and two nasty assistants, Moss and Fingers, after Smoke is spotted and photographed on a Portland, Maine street. The Mob hunters find that life isn't quite what they expected as they trail the $2.5 million they are ordered to retrieve from Smoke.

What follows is filled with action and irony as the mobsters and rapists find that their tasks are vastly more difficult than expected.

You'll have to suspend belief quite a lot towards the end of the book. That's the book's weakness.

But if you enjoy seeing the hare run the foxes to ground, you'll enjoy Smoked.

I really enjoyed the book! You can't help but get caught up in the excitement of the chase and the hunt. The characters and the book itself are hard-edged, edgy and most definitely interesting (this book is not for the faint of heart). An excellent first book for Quinlan - I'll be watching for more books to come from this author.