Saturday, January 01, 2011

Outsourced -- Dave Zeltserman

Dan Wilson's past middle age, his job has been outsourced, he has no insurance, and he's going blind. So he's going to rob a bank. He has the perfect plan, and nobody's going to get hurt. He assembles a team of other software engineers whose jobs have been outsourced, and the plan is put into motion.

If Wilson read crime fiction, he'd know that heists never go as planned, and his goes disastrously wrong. Innocent people die, which is bad enough, but to add to the problems, some of the loot belongs to really bad people. So it's not just the cops and the FBI who are after Wilson. The mob and a Russian gangster are also on the trail. The team doesn't hang together, so they start to hang separately as Wilson tries to stay alive and to hide his involvement from his family. The heist was supposed to save his family, not destroy it, and his desperation is palpable.

Eventually there's gunplay galore and bodies litter the ground. It's a bleak book with a bleak ending, one you're likely to keep reading past your bedtime to get to. Zeltserman had a breakout year in 2010, and this book will just add to his growing reputation.

1 comment:

George said...

I'm definitely reading this one!