What we’re reading Wednesday: ‘Ghostman’

Ghostman by Roger Hobbs
Knopf • $24.95 • ISBN 9780307959966
On sale February 12, 2013

You know that feeling when you pick up a book, read the first few pages—and realize you’re in for the long haul? (And oh, by the way, whatever plans you had for that weekend are officially out the window.) That’s how I felt when I started reading Ghostman by Roger Hobbs, a debut thriller that was written while the author was a student at Reed College.

The story starts with a bang—or several bangs, really, as a couple of criminals botch a heist at an Atlantic City casino. So then our main character, a “fixer” named Jack, is summoned to clean up the mess.

It’s a given that this story is suspenseful and zippy, but devoted thriller readers will be happy to hear that it’s also stylishly written, thoroughly researched and tightly plotted. Reading Ghostman, you get the sense that you’ve just discovered an author who may become a favorite for many years to come, and that is an exciting feeling indeed. In fact: Here at BookPage, we liked the novel so much we decided to interview Hobbs for our February issue—so be on the lookout for that in about six weeks.

Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of the novel:

It takes months of planning to take down a casino. Luckily for them, Ribbons had done this sort of thing before. Ribbons was a two-time felon out of Philadelphia. Not an attractive résumé item, even for the kind of guy who sets up jobs like this, but it meant he had motive not to get caught. He had skin the color of charcoal and blue tattoos he’d got in Rockview Pen that peeked out from his clothing at odd angles. He’d done five years for his part in strong-arming a Citibank in Northern Liberties back in the nineties, but had never seen time for the four or five bank jobs he’d helped pull since he got out. He was a big man. At least six foot four with more than enough weight to match. Folds of fat poured out over his belt, and his face was as round and smooth as a child’s. He could press four hundred on a good day, and six hundred after a couple of lines of coke. he was good at this, whatever his rap sheet said.

Hector Moreno was more the soldier type. Five and a half feet, a quarter of Ribbons’s weight, hair as short as desert grass, and bones that showed through his coffee-colored skin. He was a good marksman from his days in the service, and he didn’t blink except when he twitched. His sheet showed a dishonorable discharge but no time served. He got back home and spent a year cutting chops in Boston and another browbeating protection money out of dope dealers in Vegas. This was his first big job, so he was nervous about it. He had a whole pharmacy in the Dodge with him, just to get his nut up. Pills and poppers and powders and smokes.

You’ll just have to check out the novel in February to see what happens next! What are you reading today? Are you interested in Ghostman?