Thick as Thieves by Ken Lizzi
ON SALE NOW $1.99 ebook - a classic!
Epic characters, believable and authentic even while being extraordinary!
Magic, treachery, and bad decisions drive a simple heist from farce to tragedy...
Ken Lizzi’s "Thick as Thieves" may be his best novel yet.
It’s one of those rare stories I can read twice, even three times, and enjoy the witty repartee and intelligent inner monologues.
The world-building in a Ken Lizzi novel is always splendid. We don’t know for sure we’re on planet Earth, we don’t know the origins of the non-human enemy invaders, and it doesn’t matter. We see the tavern where a veteran soldier named Brick is grateful to be employed as a bouncer, despite his gimpy leg. His side lost the battle to an alien race, and Brick now works for one of the conquerors, a Haptha named Shib. The Haptha are called Sharks for their crested heads, and they’re taller, more aggressive, and more dangerous than humans, with the heightened senses of animal predators. Even Brick, a giant among men, lacks their strength, speed, and agility.
Brick, however, is not the clod everyone assumes him to be. He even knows how to read, thanks to the tavern’s most regular patron, Glum Arent. Glum is a poet who’s perpetually in need of a loan for another drink, not that he needs another drink.
Livette is the mysterious barmaid with the tattoo of an indentured servant, but she bought or fought her way free. She can handle the insults, assaults, and unwanted overtures of the patrons, but Brick has a hard time reining in his impulse to put his bouncing skills to use.
He also battles to control “The Fury,” but readers will delight in every occasion he gives in to it.
For a Shark to be more powerful than other Sharks is really saying something, and Trader Vawn is definitely something. So is his bodyguard, Dahlia. If Livette comes across as a strong woman, Dahlia is like Wonder Woman, strong and clad in warrior gear, quick and deadly with a sword. Under that armor she’s fully human, and Daddy’s girl, the only child, with a mother who tries to heal the rifts when Dahlia refuses to behave as a good girl should. Her story is so moving, the scenes with her parents so compelling, she elevates this novel well beyond the celebrated Elmore Leonard, the crime fiction author Lizzi says he admires.
Trouble begins on page one. It escalates when the shifty Shib, who uses his tavern as a front for illegal enterprises, meets Trader Vawn. Instead of being intimidated by a man of such power, Shib connives a plan to steal some of that power.
Brick, Dahlia, Glum Arent, and a low-life Shark named Nahl are drawn into Shib’s scheme. Naturally, things will not go as planned. Repercussions will be dealt with, one deadly betrayal at a time. Who will be left standing in the end?
I cannot say enough about the Shakespearian wit and intelligence, sense of timing and precision, and keen powers of observation that make this story so real and so engaging. The choices one makes, the rationalizations for them, and the inevitable consequences, are complex and profound, yet told with simplicity and clarity.
Intelligence. The more I read, the more I appreciate it when I see it. Sadly, the really smart, world-wise, experienced writer is a rare commodity these days. Hemingway and London actually lived the kind of adventures and battles they wrote about with such authenticity – not to mention their lean and distinctive prose style.
Lizzi is a veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces. He’s “been there, done that,” and apparently knows firsthand the nightmares and deprived sleep. He conveys the soldier’s life with such authenticity, there’s no believing he could have made it all up.
When asked what’s the best book I’ve read all year, I’d have to say Thick as Thieves by Ken Lizzi. (NOTE: the year was 2017 when I write this.)
Read more about Ken Lizzi at my other Hive/Steemit posts.
Hollywood needs to give us Ken Lizzi movies--and "re-infuse pulp sensibility" into fiction
I've loved Ken Lizzi, a very buff yet erudite veteran, lawyer, and author, since his debut novel "Reunion"in 2014.
Six years and four 5-star Ken Lizzi novels later, I'm still following him on Twitter and Facebook and wherever else I can find him. His one-liners crack me up on social media. His action novels are witty and clever, intelligent and authentic--leagues above the usual thriller fare.
Thick as Thieves synopsis:
The Haptha, a seven-foot tall superhuman race, won the trade war. Several of them live in the capital city of the defeated Clackmat Confederacy. Some under the terms of the peace treaty—some not. Shib, a Haptha with a criminal past, runs a tavern that serves as a front for certain of his less than legal enterprises. When he sees a chance for a heist—and a bit of mischief—he recruits a team to pull it off. Brick, with a bum leg and a quick fuse, lets loyalty and a woman involve him in the caper. Glum Arent, alcoholic poet, information broker, and occasional lock-pick, needs only greed and wine-addled imagination to entangle him and inspire plans of his own. Add Dahlia, a conflicted, sword-wielding bodyguard who betrays her employer and has eyes for Brick, and Nahl, a Haptha burglar with a penchant for violence and poor impulse control. With a crew like this, events are liable to spiral out of control. Magic, treachery, and bad decisions drive a simple heist from farce to tragedy. Can any of the thieves survive the mishaps and double-crosses?
With a nod to the novels of Elmore Leonard, the dean of American crime fiction, Thick as Thieves is gritty, street-level swords and sorcery from the author of Reunion and Under Strange Suns.
NOTE: New cover art, new edition
Ken Lizzi is an attorney and the author of an assortment of published short stories. His novels "Reunion" and "Under Strange Suns" are now available from Twilight Times Books. When not traveling - and he'd rather be traveling - he lives in Oregon with his lovely wife Isa and energetic daughter V.V. He enjoys reading, homebrewing, exercise, and visiting new places. He loathes writing about himself in the third person.
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