Roger Hobbs's (a 2011 graduate from Reed College) debut novel, Ghostman, is a superbly written dark crime thriller. It's narrated by the smart, stoic Jack Delton, aka Ghostman, a fixer as meticulous and resourceful as Jason Bourne, who translates ancient texts in his down time. (His code comes from The Aeneid: "If you can't reach heaven, raise hell.") With a story told in short, James Patterson-like chapters of addictive prose, it's as good a first noir as Nic Pizzolatto's Galveston.
An armored car heist at an Atlantic City casino goes wrong. Marcus, the brutal criminal mastermind who planned it, asks Ghostman--who owes Marcus after a botched heist in Kuala Lumpur five years earlier--to retrieve the money taken by one of the fleeing robbers. This has to happen fast: the money is tagged with an ink bomb that will go off in 48 hours, destroying the cash. As the clock ticks down, Hobbs inserts suspenseful flashbacks to that old job, where Ghostman was mentored by Angela, who taught him to cut off his "last ties with the normal world and how to live like a ghost."
After checking out the site, Ghostman concludes that there was a third person, a shooter, firing from a parking lot at the robbers below. Was this all a set-up, a double cross? Is he now in the cross-hairs? Is Marcus after him? Getting in Ghostman's way is Wolf, a sadistic killer, and a relentless FBI agent. Smart, gripping, shrewdly observed, and oh so well written, this is a sharp, standout piece of fiction. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher