Easy Money

There's a new kind of heroine out there and she takes no prisoners. Her name is Allie Kerry and we meet her in Jenny Siler's remarkably proficient debut thriller Easy Money. Allie is a courier. She learned her trade in Florida at her widowed father's knee: "In the Keys smuggling has always been a kind of family business, like farming in the Midwest. I knew several boys my age who helped their fathers or uncles on runs. None of my friends had paper routes or summer jobs busing tables. We learned early where the real money was to be made." The 27-year-old Allie, a former cocaine addict has learned many lessons well - she knows where to get false I.D.s, how to change her appearance with hair dye and contact lenses, how to floor her Mustang and pack a Walther in the back of her jeans after fastening a small holster around her ankle and sliding a Beretta inside. But she needs more than underworld savvy to save herself when she becomes the object of a nationwide manhunt, after being set up for murders she did not commit. With her cadre of scurrilous friends and a tongue at the ready with four-letter epithets, Allie is not an especially endearing heroine. It is to the author's credit that we do care about Allie and pull for her to get out of a seemingly inextricable situation. Not at all particular about what she picks up or delivers, Allie has agreed to do a pick-up at a seedy bar in the outskirts of Seattle. That should have been easy, earning her easy money. Instead, the computer disc that is slipped into her pocket results in the death of her contact sending warning signals to Allie's brain and shivers up her spine. When she seeks brief refuge with an old friend and computer expert, he, too, is slain. Allie has apparently stumbled onto evidence concerning a 30-year-old CIA cover-up in Vietnam. She is soon running for her life, having no one to trust and, actually, nowhere to go. Suspense mounts as she races through the shadowy side of American life and doesn't let up until the final startling page. With experience as a forklift driver, a furniture-mover, a grape-picker and a bartender among other occupations, one cannot help but wonder where Jenny Siler learned to write, but no matter. Write she does! Her pictures of Vietnam War experiences elicit horrified shudders while her sometimes touching reminiscences about a father-daughter relationship resonate. With the skill of an experienced master of the thriller genre, Ms. Siler constructs a commendable plot with enough ups and downs to make Easy Money a mesmerizing page-turner. She is equally deft at drawing scenes of the natural world, whether it be a muggy evening on Key West or the vast emptiness of Montana: "You begin to wonder if the retreat of the great inland sea really left mussel shells in the country so named. You can imagine fields of kelp where the wind now stirs wheat. Low clouds glide above you like pods of prehistoric whales." Jenny Siler is an author to watch - watch

Red hot and rolling, nothing comes easy for Allie Kerry, especially the money, as she races her blue '69 Mustang cross country from Seattle to Key West in Jenny Siler's excellent first novel, "Easy Money."Siler's artful and edgy prose, fleshy characterizations, and tightly-wound plot, gain her instant access to the male-dominated pantheon of American mystery writers. Her heroine, Allie Kerry, goes against the grain of convention and offers a welcome new perspective on the Chili Palmerized genre of tough guys. Not to be fooled, Allie Kerry is as street-smart and tough as they come. She is a free-lance courier for a Miami shyster and former lover named Joey. She makes her deliveries without asking questions and carries a gun, sometimes three, yet still fears most of all the normal life she has never had."Of all the sh*t I have to deal with when I'm working--bungled connections, bad packages, cops--the most difficult thing for me is the American family."Allie Kerry lost her mother and was brought up by a doting drug-smuggling father, a Vietnam vet who carried home a dark secret that comes back to haunt them both thirty years later. He is found with a bullet in his head, and Allie suddenly finds herself battling the vicious ghosts of her father's past.It is the news of her father's death, and a job for Joey along the way, that puts Allie on a long road home. But the pickup in a Bremerton pool hall goes bad and, moments after her contact slips a computer disk in her pocket, she finds him dead on the men's room floor. What was supposed to be easy, "easy money," turns into a cross-country chase for her life. Dead bodies litter her trail from Seattle to Key West and pile up at home in an incredibly cinematic and realistic shoot-out with the bad guys.Jenny Siler's thriller is a triumphant debut. Her writing is solid. She draws on a colorful imagination and makes the most of her considerable talent to shape a tight story. She knows the geography between Seattle and South Florida like a Teamster, and covers Nixon's secret war in Cambodia with the insight of a vet."Easy Money" refuses to drag. Siler delivers original characters and authentic themes and pulsating suspense. Her star has nowhere to go but up.

Not only is Allison Kerry unlike any other heroine we've ever seen before, but Jenny Siler is in a class alone among thriller writers I've read. She has character, pacing and story, but most of all she writes like a dream and INTELLIGENTLY.

If you are starting to wonder when a new talent will come along to replace the ones who are gone or whose talents are thinning out, you can relax. Jenny Siler's book is evrything the rave reviews have said. She has a distinct voice, real characters and a real plot. She is already on my "must have" list of authors.

From the beginning the action starts and never stops. The plot takes you across the country and keeps you asking what's next. Will we see another book from Ms. Siler???