Steel Away

Randall is glib, handsome and crooked...but he has a code of honor. Although he sold cars and real estate for a living before moving up to burglary there are a few things he won't do for money.
While casing a house on the Main Line he connects with perky Pam, a real estate agent who doesn't have his scruples. She thinks he might be just the man for a job she has in mind. Pam wants all of the fortune her husband is due to inherit. She'll pay Randall to dispose of Jerry, a dentist who has been sharing his toothbrush with his assistant, Carmela.
While Randall is hesitating over his career choice he falls in love with Karen, the nurse who is caring for Jerry's dying father. Randall wants the money Pam offered him, but he's not eager to do what it takes to earn it. So Pam turns for help to a small time Philadelphia hood who turns out to be Carmela's boyfriend Jesus. Jesus is anxious to demonstrate his manhood. And the result is an extraction that is far bloodier than anyone expected.

Because he pitches his work into the comic-noir end of the genre pool, Philadelphia-based Watts (Cons) has been compared to the likes of Elmore Leonard. But perhaps the truer match-up would be with Chicago's Eugene Izzi, since both men write fairly uncompromising crime works and both are adept at getting deep inside the psyches of their criminal characters. Watts has a sure ear for skewered humor and weirdly angled dialogue. Here, his plot is simple enough. Sexy Philadelphia real estate agent Pam wants to get rid of her boozy, cheating dentist hubby, Jerry. Jerry is tight with his receptionist, Carmela, who isn't as Latina or as stupid as Jerry thinks. Carmela brings her lowlife boyfriend, Jesus, in to help shake down Jerry. Randall is a likable thief hired by Pam to off the hapless Jerry. The catch is that Randall, though a criminal, is probably not a killer. He's willing to sleep with Pam but would be happier sleeping with Karen, the nurse caring for Jerry's rich father, who is dying, and whose elderly wife isn't anywhere near as senile as Pam would like to think. It's all fairly comic, until Jesus abruptly graduates from mean and cowardly to mean and violent. While Jerry is relentlessly, one-dimensionally thick, the rest of the cast is allowed to spring the occasional surprise. Randall is the best, the most enigmatic and the most engaging member of the venal lot. He gets the lion's share of the funny lines and, by the end, proves himself to be the sneakiest and most resourceful.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

It's been said that Philadephia's Main Line is so proper that a true Main Line family might worry if their daughter decided to marry the son of a Boston Brahmin. In his third novel, Watts turns that powerful sense of propriety on its ear by populating Philly's finest suburbs with some of the sleaziest human pond scum that noir has ever seen. Jerry Medsoe is a marginally competent Main Line dentist who is openly carrying on with his flashy-trashy receptionist Carmela, who knows Jerry is a pig but thinks she can scam him big time. To that end, she enlists the aid of Jesus, a psychotic cokehead from Philly's meanest streets. Meanwhile, Jerry's stunning wife, Pam, who has a mean streak as wide as Bryn Mawr, engages Randall Davies, a charming burglar, to kill her swinish husband. Very little goes according to anyone's plan, but the body count mounts steadily, and Watts is likely to have another offbeat success on his hands, following Cons (1993) and The Money Lovers (1994). Thomas Gaughan

In this wickedly delightful medley of crooks and scam artists, everyone has an ulterior motive. Randall Davies, a handsome thief, agrees to kill a cute real estate agent's philandering husband?but not until he can figure out how she will benefit financially. The husband, meanwhile, plies his pretty Puerto Rican assistant with false promises, unaware that she plans to take him for everything she can?with the help of her petty-thief boyfriend. Randall's ready wit and quick intelligence temper a potentially explosive situation. Watts (The Money Lovers, Soho, 1994) creates a memorable character in a masterful plot.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.