MYSTERY

Friends Helping Friends

Grove Atlantic. Mar. 2025. 288p. ISBN 9780802164124. $27. THRILLER
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Bunny and Jerry are bros, best of friends. So when Jerry is approached by Helen—whom supplies with illegal steroids—to rough up her ex, Tad, Jerry recruits Bunny to help. Unfortunately, they park their car in range of the closed-circuit cameras surrounding the park where they confront Tad, plus Tad is a judge, off-limits to routine mayhem such as theirs. Jerry and Bunny are quickly arrested, and Bunny is approached in jail by the feds, who offer him a deal. His uncle Willard is high up in the Christian Nation militia. If Bunny does a short prison term to establish his cred, the feds will place him in a job to draw Willard’s attention. Then All Bunny has to do is persuade his uncle to bring him into his fold. Of course, it doesn’t work out that smoothly. The feds keep raising the stakes on Bunny, and Willard doesn’t like—much less trust—him. Eventually, Bunny and Jerry bumble their way through a caper that involves gunrunners, cryptocurrency, and a militia of rejects in training.
VERDICT Hoffman’s (Clean Hands) comic crime novel would please the master of such things, Donald Westlake.
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