Book Review: Boost

Reviewed By: Gina Metz - RAM

Boost     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon UK HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Steve Brewer
Class/Genre:   Mystery
Speck Press; 2004; 221 pgs

Steve Brewer takes us on a wonderful new thrill ride with car thief, Sam Hill. Sam is thirty-seven years old and makes a quite lucrative living stealing rare collectable cars. He has been very successful at this for a number of years until he steals a 1965 Thunderbird only to discover the corpse of a DEA agent in the trunk.

Sam is quite the trickster and loves to play practical jokes on everyone. He has a couple of quite colorful sidekicks to help him when the going gets rough also. Billy Suggs is a young man who worships Sam and hopes to fill Sam’s shoes one day and follow in his footsteps. And then there is Way-Way, a massive ex-football player, who is now employed as a bouncer and lived to beat people up. Way-Way and Sam grew up together and he can always be counted to help Sam out of a jam.

Now Sam has his hands full. He has a rotting corpse in the truck of the Thunderbird at a storage lot that he needs to dispose of before someone catches the smell. He also needs to find out who set him up and why. Not only does he have the local auto theft detectives harassing him but now the DEA is also sniffing around him while he tries to solve his problems. Plus he has a very violent drug dealer, Phil Ortiz, who does not find Sam as amusing as Sam thinks he is.

I have yet to read a book by Steve Brewer that was not a good fast paced read. He continues this trend with Boost and adds humor to it also. If you were looking for a good, different type murder mystery, I would highly recommend Boost.

Gina Metz - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Gina Metz - RAM