Un día cualquiera, Breen irrumpe en una tienda y se desploma ensangrantado. Ha tenido problemas con el jefe de una pandilla de delincuentes de poca monta para la que trabaja.

**possible spoilers for previous books **

Continuing my reading of all the Nolan books by Max Allan Collins. Nolan and Jon are still looking for a way to recoup their losses from the previous heist in which the money was eliminated rather smokily. (It does help to read these books in order.) As is typical with Richard Stark’s Parker series (the inspiration for this series), there is a pattern where the heist is planned, accomplished and then something always goes wrong and the “heroes” have to extricate from the crumbling situations.

Collins pays homage to DB Cooper and plane hijackings in this book. For those who might argue it was too much of a coincidence for Nolan and Jon to be on a hijacked plane, and for those of you too young to remember anything other than 9/11 and who believe that when you get on a plane you will actually arrive at the scheduled destination, hijacking airplanes was very common in the sixties. In 1969 alone there were 82 skyjackings, so many one might call them a routine occurrence. The average number of skyjackings between 1968 and 1977 was 41. According to the Wikipedia, hijacking was used by the CIA as a weapon against Castro.

While Parker remains relatively ageless; Nolan is very conscious of his age. He knows he’s getting old and wants to retire and settle down, if that’s possible, but events continue to conspire against him. Very good series.


For the order of the Nolan series see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Allan_Collins#Nolan_series ( )