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James 'Smoke' Duggan is 60-something years old and living in Portland, Maine. He has a girlfriend in her 20s, has all the money he will ever need and spends his days sitting in his garden and visiting his girlfriend at night. He's living a comfortable life, but things are far from perfect. A few years earlier, Smoke killed a Mafia boss in New York City and took all of his money. Smoke knows it's just a matter of time until the Mafia finds him to get the money back and make him pay for killing the boss. Lately, Smoke has been feeling a little edgy and thinks he's being watched, but he shrugs it off. Meanwhile, Smoke's girlfriend, Lola Belle, goes out on auditions to be a model. During her last interview she was almost raped by the two men who said they owned the modeling agency. It's a good thing that Lola knew karate, because she was able to beat them both senseless and left the audition without any harm. But the men are not going to let Lola get away with pounding them and they begin to search for her so they can continue where they left off -- and hurt her enough so that she'll learn a good lesson. SMOKED follows the lives of Smoke and Lola as the two of them try to fend off the Mafia hit men and the lowlifes who want to get even with Lola. There's also a frightening Mafia hit man who slowly realizes that he just isn't happy killing any more. Now he's paired with a younger triggerman on this job who is a hard-core killer, and he finds he can't be certain that the young man won't murder him for the joy of it. This book is filled with action-packed car chases, a great sense if humor and has a cute plot twist. The characters are a bit over the top and you can figure out what's going to happen before it does, but I have to say that I did enjoy the book. Author Patrick Quinlan makes Smoke and his friends likeable, even though Lola is portrayed as a little too much of superwoman for me. You will be far from bored with SMOKED, which is filled with lots of action. It's definitely a different kind of book.
Reviewed by Sharon Katz, July 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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