Kaleidoscope - Softcover

Wimberley, Darryl

3.55 out of 5 stars

106 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1612181201 ISBN 13: 9781612181202

Publisher: AmazonEncore, 2011

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Jack Romaine's addiction to speakeasies and cards has landed him in a tight spot-one which he can't use his good looks to get out of. With debts to dangerous men piling up, he becomes an unwilling recruit for a Cincinnati gangster needing an expendable tool to recover his stolen cash and railroad bonds. Unfortunately, Jack is not the only man on the trail of the stolen money-he is in competition with a sadistic killer who relishes the carnage he leaves in his wake. The trail leads south to Kaleidoscope; a 'beddy' for freaks during the months when carnival is out-of-season. In this malformed community peopled by dwarfs and giants, legless women and women with three breasts, Siamese twins and sword-swallowers, Jack is very much the odd man out. Convincing these folk of his sincerity and amiability while surreptitiously trying to find out what happened to the stolen cash is going to take all his ingenuity-and will have results he could never have anticipated...

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About the Author

Darryl Wimberley has authored two critically acclaimed literary works, A Tinker's Damn and The King of Colored Town, along with the Gulf Coast noir series featuring Barrett Raines, Special Agent for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement: A Rock and a Hard Place, Dead Man's Bay, Strawman's Hammock and Pepperfish Keys. Wimberley has also garnered three feature-film credits. The screenplay for Kaleidoscope won Grand Prize Winner in a competition sponsored some years ago by Fade In magazine and is presently under option. The author and screenwriter resides with his family in Austin.

From Publishers Weekly

Hapless, handsome Jack Romaine, a small-time gambler and drinker in 1929 Cincinnati, tracks a mysterious woman who's the key to a hidden fortune in Wimberley's evocative mystery. Hauled before gangster Oliver Bladehorn, Jack is given a simple chore that will cancel his debts: pick up a woman being released from prison who will lead him to the prize in cash and stocks. On a trail rife with cruelty, violence and murder, he finds himself in Tampa, Fla., at Kaleidoscope, a beddy where carnies rest between gigs and a place for people who don't fit in anywhere else. Jack goes to work as a brodie (a gopher) in the hopes of getting a lead, while trying to avoid the brutal Arno Becker, who's after the same fortune. Best known for his Florida-based Bear Raines series (Pepperfish Keys, etc.), Wimberley invests both Jack and the carnie freaks with distinct personalities and common dignity. This vividly captured subculture has its own grotesque charm and beauty.
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