The Amateurs [Hardcover]

Marcus Sakey (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 6, 2009

New from the "reigning prince of crime fiction"*: For four friends, there's only one thing more dangerous than the men chasing them. Each other.

In just three novels, Marcus Sakey has staked a claim as "an astoundingly good writer,"* one whose believable characters-always ordinary people-face excruciating situations with life- or-death consequences. The Amateurs asks a chilling question: Do you get what you deserve, or what you take?

Alex is failing as a father. Ian keeps dangerous secrets. Jenn is pining for adventure; Mitch is pining for Jenn. Four friends just getting by. Every Thursday night they've found solace in a couple of beers and a couple of laughs. But months turn to years, and suddenly a decade is gone. None of them are where-or who-they hoped to be.

And they've decided to do something about it. To stop waiting, and start taking.

But what was supposed to be a victimless crime has become a bloody nightmare. People have been killed. A child is in danger. Ruthless men pursue them with relentless fury. And tensions they thought were long-buried threaten to destroy them. As their whole world begins to unravel, each will have to choose between their own life and the lives of others-including their best friends.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Sakey's so-so thriller, four friends—travel agent Jenn Lacie, trader Ian Trevarian, hotel doorman Mitch McDonnell and bartender Alex Kern—meet every Thursday night at the Chicago restaurant where Alex bartends and commiserate over their unsatisfying lives. When Alex's boss, Johnny Love Loverin, asks him to act as muscle for a shady back-office deal, the group decides, almost on a whim, to steal Johnny's money. The heist goes smoothly until an altercation in the alley behind the bar leads to murder, and the four friends find themselves with $250,000 and a dead body. Making matters worse, Mitch and Jenn discover that the deal they interrupted wasn't about drugs or guns but something far more deadly. Sakey (Good People) does what he can with the weak premise, but his characters will elicit little sympathy from readers who won't care why the foursome carried out their poorly planned and executed scheme. (Aug.)
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Review

"Reads like an episode of Friends directed by Tarantino" Daily Telegraph "[Leaves] readers gasping with fright and pleasure at Sakey's genius." Chicago Tribune --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult; First Edition edition (August 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525951261
• ISBN-13: 978-0525951261
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,051,251 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marcus Sakey's thrillers have been nominated for more than fifteen awards, named New York Time's Editor's Picks, and selected among Esquire's Top 5 Books of The Year. His novels GOOD PEOPLE and BRILLIANCE are both in development as feature films.

Marcus is also the host of the acclaimed television show "Hidden City" on Travel Channel, for which he is routinely pepper-sprayed and attacked by dogs.

Prior to writing, he worked as a landscaper, a theatrical carpenter, a 3D animator, a woefully unprepared movie reviewer, a tutor, and a graphic designer who couldn't draw.

Marcus lives in Chicago with his wife and daughter. His website is MarcusSakey.com, or follow him on Facebook (Facebook.com/MarcusSakey) or Twitter, where he posts under the clever handle @MarcusSakey.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars From beginning to end, THE AMATEURS will haunt you like a ghost September 14, 2009

By Bookreporter

Format:Hardcover

Starting in 2007 with THE BLADE ITSELF, his debut novel, Marcus Sakey began building his own shelf in the bookcase with a series of independent works dealing with what occurs when bad things happen to believable characters. His fourth book not only continues to explore this line of thought, but takes it to new places, wherein he deftly juggles a complex quartet of characters who are so out of their depth that they're barely aware they're drowning. Everyone, quite ironically, gets what they want in THE AMATEURS. What Sakey really gets into here --- and he's very subtle in doing this --- is demonstrating that when you reach down into the pit and pull out that jewel you have lusted after, it's often wrapped in barbed wire that's hanging on to it as well.

THE AMATEURS begins with an introduction to a group of friends, four people who have gradually gravitated toward each other into an informal Thursday night drinking meetup at Rossi's, a Chicago bar and restaurant with pretensions for something more. Alex is a bartender there, a job in which he seems to be stuck even as his ex-wife has moved on to better things, taking their daughter with her while holding his unpaid child support obligation over his head. Mitch is seething internally, not only at the minor indignities he experiences each day on the job, but also with unrequited love for Jenn. A thirty-something, quietly hot travel agent who yearns for excitement beyond the vicarious enjoyment she receives from sending clients to exotic places, Jenn happens to be involved in a friends-with-privileges relationship with Alex. Ian, the fourth member of the group, is a broker who had beginner's luck early in his career but now seems to be on a "one and done" track, held back by his addiction to cocaine and distracted by his compulsion to gambling.

The opportunity to change everything for all four of them emerges when Johnny Love, the shady owner of Rossi's, offers Alex a side job to provide some quiet "muscle" for a business transaction that is to take place in a few days. Love has a reputation as a drug dealer, and Alex is aware that Love's safe is bursting with cash. The quartet quickly --- too quickly --- conceives of a plan to separate Love from his money. Each of them has his or her own reasons. Alex can catch up on his delinquent child support, which he believes will keep his wife from leaving. Ian is deeply in debt to some very bad people. Jenn is seeking a thrill. And Mitch? He has a mad-on for Love anyway, but he primarily wants to protect Jenn. So they devise, what seems to be on the surface, a good plan. And it almost immediately begins to fall apart.

One can sense that these folks are amateurs simply by the way Ian obtains the guns they use to pull off their planned heist. At first it doesn't look like a failure; in fact, everyone initially gets what they want. But they steal a lot more than money. And suddenly, they are in very big trouble, much worse than when they began. It would be bad enough if it was just Love looking for them, but the people who really want to find them make Love look like an amateur himself. As the group dynamic slowly and then quickly begins to change, it becomes obvious that none of them are going to make it out the other end without leaving some parts behind.

The climax is by turns better than you might expect and worse than you can imagine. One of the few characters left standing is too good to consign to limbo, so I would imagine we might be seeing him or her again in a future Sakey novel. THE AMATEURS is a cautionary tale that will keep you on the straight and narrow during the day and haunt your dreams for months to come. But it is more than an excellent thriller. It is a character study, one in which Sakey expertly explores the dynamics of a group of individuals under stress and how they react. From beginning to end, THE AMATEURS will haunt you like a ghost.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent fast paced thriller November 26, 2009

By C. Shelnutt

Format:Hardcover

I really enjoyed Sakey's previous work "The Blade Itself", so I was looking forward to "The Amateurs", which tells the tale of four bored thiry-somethings that hang out on Thursday nights at a bar. None of the four is satisfied with where their lives are headed, so they impulsively plan a "can't fail" robbery. Of course, their plan fails drastically.

As a thriller and quick page turner, the book worked pretty well. The guy can definitely write. However, the ending went a little overboard in my opinion. If you haven't read "The Blade Itself", I'd read that instead of this one.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Book Club Review: Adults Who Act Like Teenagers and Cartoon Villains June 14, 2011

By Claire McManus

Format:Hardcover

Book Club Review
The Amateurs
Marcus Sakey

Our book club's book for June was THE AMATEURS, by Marcus Sakey. I wouldn't classify it so much as a "mystery" but rather as a "crime novel," or "novel of suspense."

The book follows four friends in Chicago: Alex the buff bartender; Mitch the doorman; Jenn the travel agent; and Ian the trader who's lost his edge and developed a drug habit. The owner of the restaurant at which Alex works is a seedy quasi-Underworld figure who asks Alex to serve as a sort of bodyguard/tough guy for some sort of deal that is going to happen in the back office. Alex sees a safe full of money, and the four friends hatch a plot: Why shouldn't they steal the money during the deal by bursting in and waving some guns around?

All of the characters have reasons for taking part in the crime. Alex is a divorced dad who can't make child-care payments, and his wife is now threatening to take his daughter away. Ian owes a lot of money to a guy who's going to break his legs if Ian doesn't pay him back soon. Jenn wants out of her dead-end job, and Mitch wants Jenn.

Without giving away the plot, something goes quite wrong during the heist, and it turns out that the "deal" was for something more dangerous and deadly than the drugs everyone thought would be changing hands. As the cops close in and the villains figure out who's responsible for the theft of a quarter of a million dollars, the four friends find themselves at each other's throats, and unexpected betrayals and alliances happen.

This was one of those books where we were able to pinpoint a fairly long list of both pros and cons. On the plus side, it is a fast read with decent (if not nail-biting) suspense. Sakey is a good writer, and the Chicago setting, we thought, was well done. In terms of entertainment, it kept most of us engaged and wanting to know what happened next, even though it was a bit predictable.

On the negative side, the characters - all of whom are adults - behave a lot like teenagers, which makes it hard to really like them or root for them. The two villains, who aren't even given full names, are straight out of Dick Dastardly cartoons. They do everything but tie the heroine to the train tracks as the train toots in the distance. The ending's both a downer and a little schlocky, and there's some strange bits of economic game theory thrown into the plot in the last few chapters that made a lot of us think "Huh?"

Overall, of the 12 people who took part in our discussion, 6 gave the book a thumbs up, and 6 gave it a thumbs down. The "thumbs ups" were not really enthusiastic but rather more along the lines of "an OK read, not bad, but not something to go out of your way to look for."

I personally thought it would make a decent TV movie but as a book it just didn't come together for me. And yet I have to say that Sakey is a good writer (we all agreed on that). So maybe this is just a case of a good writer with a not-very-good plot. God knows that happens a lot with well-known writers who phone in books featuring the same old series character(s).

This should really get 2 1/2 stars, because it's not, overall, good enough for three, but it's better than two. I'm erring on the side of 3 because it's so well written.