Read as part of CBR15Bingo: take flight. The main character in this book is a pilot and there are many scenes of him flying people in the air.
This is not a serious book so if you’re willing to go along with the flow (or the flight, haha), you might enjoy it like I did. If not, give it a hard pass.
The first 50% or so of this read like a script from a lost 50s crime film starring Frank Sinatra. John Sandrolini has a great sense of that classic dialogue and he turns it up to a ten. It’s silly but again, I was having fun with it.
Both Sinatra and his fictional buddy, the protagonist Joe Buonomo are looking for a missing wannabe film starlet. Sinatra is looking cuz he wants to make her part of his harem, Buonomo is looking cuz she’s an old flame. Both of them also have different motivations, Sinatra in particular, that bump up against the mob, the Kennedys, a Mexican porn king and some other assorted baddies, all of whom are drawn extremely broad, sometimes cringe-ingly so.
I did enjoy the cat-and-mouse game of the first half but there’s really no reason for this book to exist beyond 250 pages. The sojourn to Mexico was exhausted and half baked and I was ready for it to be over with every eyeballing scene. Had it stuck to 250 and tightened things up, it might have been a 4-star historical crime read.
But overall, it’s not bad. Some books are designed for certain people and the idea of this book was designed for me, even if the execution was lacking in many spots.
