Buy this book
Books N Bytes participates in affiliate programs including Amazon Associates and Bookshop.org. We may earn a commission when you purchase through our links at no extra cost to you.
Herbie's Game is the fourth Junior Bender novel from Timothy Hallinan and the book where the comic-crime series picks up genuine emotional weight. Herbie Mott, the burglary mentor who taught Junior the craft and who has been quietly present across the previous three books, is murdered in the opening chapter. Junior's investigation into who killed him takes the form of working backward through a chain of stolen-then-handed-off envelopes that Herbie had been moving for an unnamed client at the end of his life.
Hallinan's strength in Herbie's Game is the way he holds the comic-thriller pleasures together with the genuine grief Junior is processing across the chapters. The LA crime-underworld set pieces are immaculate. The flashback chapters of Herbie teaching young Junior the craft are some of the most affecting writing in the series. Fans of Donald Westlake's Dortmunder novels or Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder sequence (when Scudder is mourning a friend) will recognize the comic-form-meets-elegy register Hallinan is operating in.
Junior's ex-wife Kathy and his daughter Rina continue to anchor the emotional ground. The closing chapters earn their weight.
Five stars. Junior Bender at its absolute peak. The Herbie's Game Timothy Hallinan novel is one of the most genuinely moving comic-crime novels of the 2010s. Recommended without reservation. Readers new to the series should start at Crashed; this is a payoff that requires the earlier books.
Related reads
If you liked Herbie's Game
Crashed
by Timothy Hallinan
The first Junior Bender novel. Timothy Hallinan writing an LA burglar-turned-investigator with a stolen-art crisis and a teenage daughter. One of the most underread comic-crime debuts of the 2010s.
Little Elvises
by Timothy Hallinan
The second Junior Bender novel. A 70s music-industry investigation, a senior-citizen Mafia kingpin, and Hallinan tightening every dial.
The Fame Thief
by Timothy Hallinan
The Fame Thief by Timothy Hallinan review. The 3rd Junior Bender LA comic-crime novel. A 1950s Hollywood blacklist mystery, an ensemble of nonagenarian Mafia, the series at its absolute peak.
The Fear Artist
by Timothy Hallinan
The Fear Artist by Timothy Hallinan review. The 5th Poke Rafferty Bangkok thriller. A travel-writer father, a dying CIA contact, and the Thai military police as the antagonist. Genuinely terrifying.
For the Dead
by Timothy Hallinan
For the Dead by Timothy Hallinan review. The 6th Poke Rafferty novel. A stolen phone, a dead Thai colonel, and Miaow at the center of the crisis. The series in family-thriller form.
More by this author