Suicide Squeeze

Conner Samson thinks of himself as a failure in life. And he is absolutely right. He blows a college sports scholarship, a chance at being a pro player. You name every good break that wandered into Samson's life and he could tell you how he blew it. Bad luck, he would say. Now he can't afford to pay for a dollar beer at the bar, his latest inspired bets having failed. He owes Rocky Big, the local crime chieftain, $2,500 in lost wagers. He knows that Fat Otis, Rocky's enforcer, a 6' 5" black man will soon be looking for him to collect. (As it turns out, Otis and Conner are old buddies so Conner knows he has a tiny bit of wiggle room before his bones are broken.) Desperate for a quick paying gig, Conner winds up plying his occasional trade as a repo man, this time looking for a sailboat. The sailboat belongs to Teddy Folger, another loser in the game of life. Folger has divorced his life, hidden his assets, burned down a strip mall shopping center for the insurance and is about to sail into the sunset with a young woman half his wage. The woman, though she, when in financial need, accepted a thousand dollars to spend a night with Teddy now wants nothing to do with him. Teddy is dejected, but he still has his hole card: literally. Teddy has a baseball card signed by Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn Monroe and Billy Wilder who directed the star in "The Seven Year Itch," the movie with the famous scene of Marilyn's skirt billowing upward. Teddy thinks the card is worth a million dollars, which will fund his life of sybaritic ease. Across the continent and the Pacific Ocean, Ahira Kuriska is locked in private conflict with Hito Hyatta in their race to accumulate world class collections of, well, collectibles. Kurisaka is a billionaire, his fortune rooted in his earlier life (which he hasn't quite left behind) as a feared member of the Japanese underworld Yakuza. Kuriska is always one-upped it seems by Hyatta. Kuriska is convinced that Hyatta is seeking to acquire Teddy Folger's rare baseball trading card. Kuriska is determined to beat his rival. And thus the stage is set for a riotous and murderous romp across Florid and Alabama as corpses pile up and a case of weird characters make their appearances (and often exits) in Victor Gischler's charming, endearing and very funny novel. There's Tyranny Jones, eccentric artist and nymphomaniac (oh wait, Tyranny's therapist reminds her that she is not a nymphomaniac, but a sex addict) and sort-of long time lover of Conner Samson. Sort-of lover because Tyranny, who hops into bed with everyone including a dragooned delivery driver, won't committ the deed with Conner. Professor Dan, Tyranny's artsy husband accepts his wife's special needs. There's Rocky Big himself, a criminal colussus who is really quite a sophisticated, caring fellow . . . when he's not having people disappear or their bones broken. JoEllen Becker, late of the NSA, is there, fueled by murderous memories of her owwn failures and better

It's tough not to like a novel with Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe at the center of the plot. Even tougher when you've got characters like Fat Otis running around "turning strong, healthy men into little, mashed-up heaps of bone and flesh." And then there's bookie Rockie Big, an adulterous nympho girlfriend named Tyranny, a fat Japanese billionaire Yakuza boss, and a busted ex-NSA agent, all playing backup to our hero, the broken-down would-be ballplayer, hard luck gambler, sometimes repo-man and all times lovable Conner Samson. If like me you'd never heard of Victor Gischler, fasten your seatbelt and lock in for the whacked-out spawn of the mating of Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard, an in-your-face trip through Florida's panhandle while Samson tracks down a deadbeat's boat and a legendary baseball card. Gischler's prose literally rips across the pages, too fast for poetry, too lean for embellishment, bouncing from one-liner to six-shooter as thick with black humor as it is with fresh corpses. And give Gischler extra credit: nowhere in his cast of misfits and miscreants is there a single Russian mobster, the seemingly obligatory feature of every thriller written in the past couple of years. If you're looking for an irreverent read straight from the hip, fast and furious with not an ounce of social redeeming value to distract you, Victor Gischler and "Suicide Squeeze" marks the end of your quest. "Just do it."

Gischler walks a peculiar tightrope between humor and satire. On the surface, you wonder if he's doing a parody of James Crumley, with an alcoholic loser hero, insanely over-the-top villains, and femme fatales amundo, all with a tongue-in-cheek style that makes the reader smile. But there's also graphic violence here. And graphic sex. And though the book is funny, it's never silly. Gischler respects the crime genre, and plays by the rules. The end result is a fast, fun read that will please Gischler's growing fan base and convert the non-believers. If you enjoy crime fiction, you'll enjoy Suicide Squeeze. If you don't enjoy crime fiction, why the hell are you bothering to read this review?

People kill each other over the dumbest things. You might think that the reason for the carnage in SUICIDE SQUEEZE, Victor Gischler's third and latest novel, is absurd. The motivation behind everything (well, almost everything) that takes place here is the acquisition of...a baseball card. It's not just any baseball card, though. It's a 1954 Joe DiMaggio card, autographed by Mr. Coffee himself, and the actress he was married to at the time, a starlet named Marilyn Monroe. Oh, by the way, there is a third signature on the card, that belonging to movie director Billy Wilder. There may have been a lot of Joltin' Joe DiMaggio cards printed, but one having those three signatures on it is truly one of a kind. Would people kill for a card like that? Yes. They would. As you might expect, such a card is well beyond the reach of your average trading card fan, the kid with the dirty t-shirt and the dirty five-dollar bill who refuses to change either one. In SUICIDE SQUEEZE, however, the card has attracted the attention of Ahira Kurisaka, an unscrupulous and extremely wealthy businessman who wants the card and is willing to pay any price, and do anything, to get it. The owner of the prized possession is Teddy Folger, who used the valuable card as part of an insurance scam to fly the coup on his obligations to his ex-wife and everyone else within grabbing distance of him. Folger claimed that the card was destroyed in a fire, collected on his insurance policy, and got out of Dodge, sailing on a leased yacht on which he has no intentions of making payments. He of course still has the card and is looking to clandestinely sell it to the highest bidder. Enter Conner Samson, a down-on-his-luck repo man who is retained by the rightful owner of the boat for the express purpose of getting it back. Samson gets to Folger about the same time that Kurisaka's representatives do, only he's a step or three behind. Samson gets the yacht, and Kurisaka's hirelings think he also has the card. Throw one of Samson's past due gambling debts, and a polite but firm collector, into the mix, and you have a "suicide squeeze." Although Gischler is only three books into a brilliant career, he has thoroughly mastered the ability, as demonstrated in this novel, to present a complex plot without losing the reader in the narrative. Gischler's characters are quirky but believable, and his sense of humor keeps the plot afloat rather than miring it in absurdity. One quick example is a scene wherein Samson attends a science fiction convention. Gischler nails everything --- the generic hotel, the merch dealers, and most importantly, the crowd --- with just a few sentences that will leave you howling and at the same time humbled. Incidentally, Gischler knows his stuff as well (I have my first Byrne X-Men issue under lock and key, too!) and as a result you can't read SUICIDE SQUEEZE without picking up a nugget or two of arcane knowledge along the way. Best of all, it is a fast, fun read. You can

There were many things you could call Conner Samson, but lucky, rich and disciplined weren't any of them. Conner took the only job he could find: repossessing a boat. Finding the boat proves to be the easy part. Staying alive long enough to get paid is the hard part. Unbeknownst to Conner, on board is perhaps the most collectible baseball card ever. It's a card people are willing to kill for - literally. The boat owner wants it so he can run away to an island and live the good life. The boat owner's ex wants it as the alimony she never received. The insurance claim agent wants to use it as bait for bigger fish. Two mercenary Japanese collectors want it to one-up each other. Caught between them all - and his bookie's collectors - Conner's life goes from bad to worse as the body count rises. Can Conner pull himself together long enough to outwit them and get paid? Suicide Squeeze is a hard-boiled, wild ride that doesn't let up. Unexpected twists and turns are fast and numerous; you're never quite sure what's going to happen next. Gischler doesn't waste a word. His terse style enhances and adds depth to the story and characters - and what a cast of characters there is! Each one is quirky, vivid, almost a caricature in itself, including the anti-hero, Conner Samson. With few redeeming qualities, yet very self-aware, Conner's the bad boy underdog you root for despite yourself. You can't help but hope to see more of Conner's exploits in more novels to come. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and bought Gischler's first two novels to read as well.