My Own Worst Enemy

by Brandon Hebert

Overview

From Publishers Weekly
At the start of Hebert's less than convincing debut, two Coral Gables, Fla., police officers nab burglar Jack Murray outside the house he's just broken into while his partner, Rudy Naxa, escapes with the loot. After serving a year and a day in prison, Murray decides to get out of the game. Murray's patron, a Miami mob boss, makes him the manager of a strip club, which is ostensibly on the up-and-up. Soon, Murray finds himself falling for a new employee of the club, Miranda Mendoza, a 26-year-old pole dancer who's in fact an undercover FBI agent. Later, after Murray runs across Naxa and winds up on the enemies' list of the thugs who have taken Naxa under their wing, he has to struggle to stay on the straight and narrow. That Mendoza is attracted to Murray, despite his past on the wrong side of the law, is as implausible as her revealing her true role to people she barely knows. (Dec.)
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From Booklist
Poor Jack Murray just got out of jail and wants to remain free. Unfortunately, he runs into Rudy Maxa, his partner in the botched robbery that put him in the slammer. To make matters worse, Rudy now works for Tiras Williams, a tough young player in Miami's underworld. Tiras is working on a major arms deal and does not want any outsiders near his business. He decides to get rid of Jack. Now working for his former boss, Caesar, Jack is running a strip club and trying to keep a low profile, but he finds Miranda Mendoza, one of the dancers at the club, very intriguing. As they get to know each other better outside of work, they become unlikely allies in the face of trouble. Ultimately, Jack is tempted by one last high-stakes opportunity that is too hard to pass up. Readers will be compelled to follow the caper and learn Jack's fate. --Barbara Bibel

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781432826611
Publisher:	Gale Group
Publication date:	12/09/2009
Sold by:	CENGAGE LEARNING
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

Editorial Reviews

At the start of Hebert's less than convincing debut, two Coral Gables, Fla., police officers nab burglar Jack Murray outside the house he's just broken into while his partner, Rudy Naxa, escapes with the loot. After serving a year and a day in prison, Murray decides to get out of the game. Murray's patron, a Miami mob boss, makes him the manager of a strip club, which is ostensibly on the up-and-up. Soon, Murray finds himself falling for a new employee of the club, Miranda Mendoza, a 26-year-old pole dancer who's in fact an undercover FBI agent. Later, after Murray runs across Naxa and winds up on the enemies' list of the thugs who have taken Naxa under their wing, he has to struggle to stay on the straight and narrow. That Mendoza is attracted to Murray, despite his past on the wrong side of the law, is as implausible as her revealing her true role to people she barely knows. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

Everyone's getting squeezed in Hebert's fast, slick debut thriller. You'd think Jack Murray would deserve a break, since he's just done four years for a burglary Rudy Maxa walked away from with all the swag. But no sooner does Jack tell their boss Caesar Pelli that he wants to go straight than the pressure starts to mount again. Instead of saying yes or no, Caesar puts Jack in charge of his strip club, supposedly a transitional job where he can practice keeping on the up-and-up. It's there that Jack meets stripper Shelly Suxxx, who's really FBI agent Miranda Mendoza, a kindred spirit also getting squeezed between two jobs. Now that Rudy's working for badass crime lord Tiras Williams, the pressure's on him to report back on every move his mistrustful old friend makes if he doesn't want to end up in a shallow grave. Even Caesar, whose organization is under investigation by every cop in south Florida, and Tiras, who's planning a large-scale gun deal with Rudy's ex-boss, Atlanta gangster Lloyd Bone, feel as if they're getting squeezed. And when the contents are under this much pressure, there's no telling what might erupt. Hebert doesn't have Elmore Leonard's lazy humor, or his effortless way of making every clipped sentence snap and sing. But he's already got something of Leonard's talent for kicking lowlifes into a breakneck pace, and he doesn't mind killing off minor characters to make a point. An author to watch.

Kirkus Reviews