The Backup Men

During his lifetime, Ross Thomas embarked on 3 specific series.This book might be the high point of the second, the Mac's Placebooks. Mike Padillo is the vaguely foreign rake who is the silent partner in a bar & grill run by Mac McCorkle, a former foreign correspondant. Usually told from Mac's point of view, these stories involve missions that Padillo, a former spy, is drawn into. This one involves protecting a Middle-eastern king from an oil conglomerate that needs him dead by a certain date. As is usual for Ross Thomas, the emphasis is on character, dialoge and irony, not necessarily in that order. In this, he displayed why he was considered the mystery writers' favorite storyteller by layering his tale with an authenic mystery along with the wanton sex and violence.