Smoked by Patrick Quinlan

Smoked by Patrick Quinlan
Genre: Fiction/ Suspense
Publication Date: 2006
Pages: 276
Challenges: A-Z Reading #51 (Q Author)

Admittedly I picked this book because I needed a Q author, but I liked this debut novel enough that I’ll seek out Quinlan’s second book.

Smoke Dugan is a man with a past and it’s a past he’s kept hidden from his much younger girlfriend. Smoke used to build bombs for the mob. Now he’s living in Portland, Maine and his girlfriend thinks he’s a retiree who makes toys for special needs kids. Smoke’s girlfriend, Lola has had a rough life too. She grew up in the projects in Chicago and was brutally raped as a teenager. Since then, she’s studied martial arts and can certainly defend herself. In fact the book opens with a pretty brutal scene involving Lola and a couple of con-men/porn filmmakers.

Before long, Smoke, Lola, those con-men and a couple of mob hit-men are all involved in a round robin chase of each other.

It all sounds like something like a Quentin Tarantino film and that’s exactly how it reads. It’s a fast paced chase/suspense book that has lots of twists along the way. Not all of them are believable, but it’s a fun, quick read. There are some pretty brutal scenes, so if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing you won’t like this.