Count Me Out (Mask Noir)

?2,000,000 in used notes is an attractive proposition. Too attractive. And when Gottfleisch makes one mistake in his attempt to steal it, the cash disappears, and he knows exacly who?s taken it. So does the police. So does everyone else. What no one knows is where Scott Heywood has gone, and what he?s done with the money. But they?re all determined to find out. Which makes it all rather unpleasant for Heywood?s abandonned wife and son, his brother, Jet, the fairground boxer, and most of all for Jet?s eight-year-old daughter, who becomes the prime target of Heywood?s pursuers.

Combine a very minor league boxer, his van-driver brother, a blimpy master villain named Gottfleisch, and the darkest of Londons, and you have the audacious, pulpacious Count Me Out. Even mystery readers who prefer their killings off the page and their protagonists upper-crust should thrill to this tale of a heist gone wrong. Russell James's universe is rough and ready, to put it mildly, though not entirely without an ethical center. As one character so wisely puts it: "There's murdering and killing, my little dove. One person might kill by accident, while someone else don't kill no one, but is really nasty all the time."