Cash Landing (Jack Swyteck Series)

by James Grippando

Overview

The New York Times bestselling author of Cane and Abe and Black Horizon blends Goodfellas and Elmore Leonard in this wild, suspenseful caper inspired by actual events, in which a band of amateur thieves pulls off one of the biggest airport heists in history with deadly consequences.

Every week, a hundred million dollars in cash arrives at Miami International Airport, shipped by German banks to the Federal Reserve. A select group of trusted workers moves the bags through Customs and loads them into armored trucks.

Ruban Betancourt has always played by the rules. But the bank taking his house and his restaurant business going bust has driven him over the edge. He and his wife deserve more than life has handed them, and he’s come up with a ballsy scheme to get it. With the help of an airport insider, he, his coke-head brother-in-law, Jeffrey, and two ex-cons surprise the guards loading the armored trucks and speed off with $7.4 million in the bed of a pickup truck.

Investigating the heist, FBI agent Andie Henning, newly transferred to Miami from Seattle, knows the best way to catch the thieves is to follow the money. Jeffrey’s drug addiction is as conspicuous as the Rolex watches he buys for dancers at the Gold Rush strip club. One of the ex-cons, Pinky Perez, makes no secret of his plan to own a swinger’s club—which will allow him carte blanche with his patrons’ wives. Levelheaded Ruban is desperately trying to lay low and hold things together.

But Agent Henning isn’t the only one on their trail, and in the mob-meets-Miami fashion, these accidental thieves suddenly find themselves way in over their heads . . . and sinking fast.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062295453
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	06/02/2015
Series:	Jack Swyteck Series
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

James Grippando is a New York Times bestselling author of twenty-four novels. He was a trial lawyer for twelve years before the publication of his first novel in 1994 (The Pardon), and now serves as counsel at Boies Schiller & Flexner LLP. He lives in South Florida with his wife, three children, two cats, and a golden retriever named Max who has no idea that he’s a dog.

Hometown:

Coral Gables, Florida

Date of Birth:

January 27, 1958

Place of Birth:

Waukegan, Illinois

Education:

B.A. with High Honors, University of Florida, 1980; J.D. with Honors, University of Florida, 1982

Website:

http://www.jamesgrippando.com

Editorial Reviews

04/20/2015
FBI special agent Andie Henning, a regular in bestseller Grippando’s Jack Swytek series (Black Horizon, etc.), plays a leading role in this tragicomic crime novel. In the heist of a bank transfer at a Miami International Airport warehouse, Ruban Betancourt, the head of an amateur gang that includes his coke-addicted brother-in-law, manages to bag more than $9 million in cash. The robbery goes off without a hitch, but that’s the last time things go right. The size of the haul attracts rival crooks, and Ruban must cope with the fallout from his henchmen’s greed and stupidity while keeping his role hidden from his wife, Savannah. Recently transferred from Seattle to Miami, Andie digs away at whatever small clues she finds, at one point going undercover in a seedy sex club. Beleaguered Ruban’s every move seems to backfire with money hemorrhaging and dreams evaporating. Those expecting the wit of the late Donald E. Westlake’s John Dortmunder caper series will be disappointed. Agent: Richard Pine, Inkwell Management. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Fast-paced ... recalls the caper novels of Donald E. Westlake.

Booklist

Action-packed … Buoyed by Grippando’s strong characteres ... Cash Landingis one of Grippando’s most hard-edged novels and shows how the best-formed plans quickly spiral out of control when greed and stupidity enter the equation.

Sun Sentinel

Grippando makes the best use of reality as he spins fictional gold with Cash Landing.

Mystery Scene

2015-03-21
Thieves fall out over a fabulous jackpot that somehow isn't quite enough to go around. The 1978 JFK-Lufthansa heist fictionalized in the movie GoodFellas set the gold standard for swag, but an unlikely trio in Miami has beaten that record. Without breaking a sweat, Ruban Betancourt, his softie brother-in-law Jeffrey Beauchamp, and Jeffrey's uncle Craig "Pinky" Perez have lifted $9.5 million from another unlucky Lufthansa flight. "Too easy," Ruban reflects apprehensively. Too true, since the thieves' troubles are just beginning. Pinky and Jeffrey chafe under Ruban's demand that they hide their shares of the loot instead of spreading it around; Jeffrey immediately starts to blow his take on cocaine, lap dances, and Rolexes he presents to hookers; and Ruban's unwillingness to tell his wife, Savannah, that he stole a lot of money ties him in a progressively tighter series of knots. The main problem, though, is that every single person the three reach out to, from the dreadlocked Cuban Ruban hires to scare Jeffrey into keeping a lower profile to the stripper who betrays Jeffrey to a gang of kidnappers, is less interested in maintaining the bonds of true friendship or honoring verbal contracts than in getting a piece of the action themselves. The climactic betrayal comes when Edith Baird, the mother of Ruban's ex-girlfriend, takes $200,000 to give Ruban custody of their daughter and then turns around to sell him out to FBI Andie Henning (Black Horizon, 2014, etc.) for an even bigger reward—but there's still half the story to run, none of the remaining moves either original or edifying. Andie's bridegroom, series regular Jack Swyteck, turns up in the last chapter to help slam the door on this zany, overlong caper. But it's hard to care which of these lowlifes ends up on top when they're all so despicable.

Kirkus Reviews