American Skin -- Ken Bruen

I've known I was going to read this ever since I read the first chapter somewhere. EQMM? Can't recall. Anyway, it's enough to hook anybody, pure adrenaline, death, and carnage. The book doesn't let up much after that, either, with its interconnecting storylines and flashbacks handled so smoothly that you hardly notice the transitions.

Stephen Blake is involved in an bank robbery that goes wrong. His best friend dies, but he winds up with tons of money that his girlfriend knows how to launder. She works on that from Ireland, while he comes to the U.S. Blake, I should mention, is the sort of Good Guy, and he's up against as twisted a bunch of loonies as you'll ever encounter, including Dade, a killer who's obsessed with Tammy Wynette; Sherry, a woman who loves sex and killing people, not necessarily in that order; Stapleton, an Irish killer who's tougher than stones; and several others. All their stores come together eventually, and there are a couple of things you can be sure of in with a Bruen book: it's going to be darker than dark and that it's not going to end well for anybody involved. So be warned. This isn't a cozy by any stretch of the imagination.

This is the longest Bruen novel I've read, and it's the first one that seems clearly set up for a sequel. I don't know if there'll be one, but I'm sure I'll read it if there is.