Every Man a Menace

Title:

Every Man a Menace

A Novel

Author:

Hoffman, Patrick

Subject:

Thriller

Mystery

Suspense

Fiction

Description:

The author of The White Van delivers “everything you could want in a thriller—lightning pace, dead-on dialogue, and a twisting, high-torque plot” (Award-winning author Carl Hiaasen). Patrick Hoffman burst onto the crime fiction scene with The White Van, a bank heist thriller set on the back streets of San Francisco and a finalist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award. Now he returns with his second novel, Every Man a Menace, the inside story of a ruthless ecstasy-smuggling ring. San Francisco is about to receive the biggest delivery of MDMA to hit the West Coast in years. Raymond Gaspar, just out of prison, is sent to the city to check in on the increasingly erratic dealer expected to take care of distribution. In Miami, the man responsible for getting the drugs across the Pacific has just met the girl of his dreams—a woman who can’t seem to keep her story straight. And thousands of miles away in Bangkok, someone farther up the supply chain is about to make a phone call that will put all their lives at risk. Stretching from the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia to the Golden Gate of San Francisco, Every Man a Menace offers “a mind-bending, attention-demanding narrative as full of shocks and surprises as an LSD party” (The Wall Street Journal).

Publisher:

Atlantic Monthly Press

Grove Atlantic

Date:

2016/10/04

Digital Format:

READ IN BROWSER

ADOBE EPUB

KINDLE

Language:

English

ISBN:

9780802190130

Summary

The author of The White Van delivers "everything you could want in a thriller--lightning pace, dead-on dialogue, and a twisting, high-torque plot" (Award-winning author Carl Hiaasen).

Patrick Hoffman burst onto the crime fiction scene with The White Van , a bank heist thriller set on the back streets of San Francisco and a finalist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award. Now he returns with his second novel, Every Man a Menace , the inside story of a ruthless ecstasy-smuggling ring.

San Francisco is about to receive the biggest delivery of MDMA to hit the West Coast in years. Raymond Gaspar, just out of prison, is sent to the city to check in on the increasingly erratic dealer expected to take care of distribution. In Miami, the man responsible for getting the drugs across the Pacific has just met the girl of his dreams--a woman who can't seem to keep her story straight. And thousands of miles away in Bangkok, someone farther up the supply chain is about to make a phone call that will put all their lives at risk.

Stretching from the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia to the Golden Gate of San Francisco, Every Man a Menace offers "a mind-bending, attention-demanding narrative as full of shocks and surprises as an LSD party" ( The Wall Street Journal ).

Author Notes

Patrick Hoffman is a writer and private investigator based in Brooklyn. His first novel, The White Van, was a finalist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and was named a Wall Street Journal best book of the year. He was born in San Francisco and worked there as an investigator, both privately and at the San Francisco Public Defender's Office.

Reviews (2)

Booklist Review

In The White Van (2014), Hoffman surveyed the roiling, combative world of San Francisco crime. This time, he's enlarged his canvas, focusing on an international chain of people engaged in producing, distributing, and selling the drug they call Molly: Ecstasy. Principals at every link in the highly lucrative chain are predators, preying on other links of the chain, and sometimes it ends in murder. Every Man a Menace seems a memorably apt title, but Raymond Gaspar and Semion Rosenstein are primarily dangers to themselves. Raymond, fresh out of prison, is chosen by a powerful gangster to gauge the stability of Shadrack Pullman, who sells the Molly in the Bay Area. Meanwhile, Semion, once an Israeli drug dealer who now co-owns several upscale clubs in Miami, is targeted by a beautiful, willful Brazilian woman from New Jersey; she turns Semion into a lovelorn teen. Other principals are apex human predators. Hoffman has crafted a powerful, albeit bleak, crime novel. It will be interesting to see what he does next.--Gaughan, Thomas Copyright 2016 Booklist

Library Journal Review

For his second novel (after The White Van), private investigator-turned-novelist -Hoffman spins a complex, globe-spanning tale of the ecstasy trade that plays with time and perspective in striking ways. Raymond Gaspar is released from prison with instructions to moderate a rumored rift in the San Francisco MDMA pipeline, which runs through Gloria Ocampo, a well-dressed grandmother in her 50s. -Hoffman then moves his story line back three months to introduce Miami club owner Semion Rosenstein, whose involvement in ecstasy smuggling takes a dark turn when he wakes up with the blood of a woman he'd become infatuated with on his mattress. That woman will reemerge, with a different name, as a free agent looking to cash in on Gloria's next shipment, which has become significantly more lucrative thanks to some fateful decision-making from Semion's contact in Bangkok. The novel's ambitious architecture is fun to work out and lends the final section a surprising amount of tension as all the pieces collide, but it comes at the cost of character development. None of them truly resonate once their final fates are sealed; then again, perhaps we're not supposed to connect too much to these scam artists. VERDICT A solid addition to most crime fiction collections from a -promising author to watch. [See Prepub Alert, 4/25/16.]-Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.