Mini-Review | Blown by Mark Haskell Smith

BLOWN
by Mark Haskell Smith

Grove Press, Black Cat
Publication Date: June 12, 2018

From Goodreads:

Bryan LeBlanc worked his way up into a plum position on Wall Street as the boy genius of the foreign exchange desk. Surrounded by acolytes of the free market, the true believers, the U.S. Marines of capitalism—“the few, the proud, the completely full of themselves”—Bryan soon realizes that being honest at a dishonest job is not the path to success. He decides to give Wall Street a taste of its own medicine and hatches an intricate plan to disappear permanently with just enough misappropriated money—and sailing classes—to spend his golden years cruising the Caribbean.

Bryan quickly learns that being a criminal, even a really smart one, is more complicated than he thought. He finds himself on the run in the Cayman Islands, wanted for murder. On his trail is an irresponsible team of investigators sent by his Wall Street firm, hellbent on reclaiming the millions before their clients notice its missing: his boss, Seo-yun Kim, who’s committed to not only clearing her name but escaping her suffocating fiancé and their pending nuptials; the investment bank’s collections agent, Neal Nathanson, depressed over a recent break-up with his boyfriend; and an ex-cop from Curaçao, Piet Room, who has traded in his badge for spouse spying as a private investigator. Their efforts are complicated by an Australian sailor begrudgingly circumnavigating the globe to fundraise for breast cancer awareness.

NetGalley and Grove Atlantic provided me with a digital ARC of Blown in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This one wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but not in a bad way. Truthfully, I’m not sure I knew what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting to laugh as much as I did. And once I was laughing, I was surprised to find such deep characters connected to something with so many laughs.

In any given chapter, you could find something humorous, intriguing, somber, erotic, brutal, or a mix of them all.

As I mentioned before, the characters were fantastic. Real. Wonderfully flawed, and capable of making a mistake just as often as the rest of us. They’ve been living lives long before the story picks up, and this book is just a blip that happens along the way.

The things explored among these characters were the most interesting parts. The ideals of marriage, work-life balance, sexuality, relationships, material things, and of course, money. It asks the tough questions like what even “good” people do when faced with a ton of money.

Fun fact about this post: This book was also a really quick read!