Boost
by Steve Brewer
Speck Press, 252 pages, hardback, 2004
Sam Hill is a professional car thief. Boosting cars is his main source of emotional stimulus ... with the possible exception of his romantic yearnings toward his fence, Robin Mitchell, daughter of the fence and car thief who mentored Sam way back in the days before he'd found anything worthwhile to do with his life. In turn Sam is mentoring the youth Billy Suggs, teaching him not just how to be a car thief but the artistry of the profession – for Sam's specialty is not common-or-garden theft but the stealing, under commissions channeled through Robin, of rare and collectible items.
It's a good life until the day Sam discovers the Thunderbird he's just stolen has a dead body in the trunk. His first task is of course to get rid of the corpse before the cops come sniffing (perhaps literally) around. But the problem's bigger than that. The whole situation smacks of a setup: someone's trying to land him not just in trouble but in serious trouble, including a possible murder rap. That someone has to be stopped before they try something, well, worse.
Aided by Billy, Robin and Sam's man-mountain friend Way-Way, Sam soon traces the line back to seedy car fence Ernesto Morales and beyond him to drugs kingpin Phil Ortiz, who, it proves, is seeking revenge for the time Sam boosted one of his prized collection of vintage cars. The makeshift team of buddies find themselves taking on Ortiz and Ortiz's equally murderous army of thugs in a tit-for-tat war of thrust and counterthrust, all the while keeping out of the clutches of both local and federal cops. This is not a war Sam intends to lose, even though just capitulating and getting out of town could well be his wiser course. But to win it he's going to have to be very inventive indeed ...
This is modern, straightforward, fast-moving, no-nonsense caper fiction at something close to its finest. The characters are beautifully and economically drawn, in the best noir tradition – not just the major players but also the supporting cast, including notably the cops Stanton and Delgado and their fed counterparts Brock and Jones (Jones is an especially delightful creation). At times the text is as laugh-out-loud funny as anything by Donald E. Westlake; at other times it's as grim as anything by Westlake's auctorial alter ego Richard Stark. Always it's possessed of a lively wit and intelligence ... and it would make a marvellous movie.
This little gem of a novel is thoroughly recommended.
—Crescent Blues