Six Bad Things: A Novel (Henry Thompson)

The second half of the book is a neverending parade of cartoon violence. The cast begins to blur and fade together as our hero suffers one beating/shooting/injury after another but keeps on going with the help of an occasional percocet instead of three weeks in the hospital. By the end I had lost track of who was doing what to whom and for what reason. Improbable coincidences pile up and let the hero's pursuers track him down against all odds. I think I read and enjoyed the author's first book but this one was like finishing a dull assignment. It was a chore to read at the end.

I made the mistake of reading "6 Bad Things" before reading "Caught Stealing" so I
read them out of sequence. Minor faux pas. I got over it and thoroughly enjoyed "caught Stealing"! Charlie, You Da Man!

A third of the through the book, defined by painfully detailed repetitive narrative of an alcoholic, self-pitying loser, essentially all that has happened is he has been beaten up by some large foreign guys (more than once) and found his neighbor's mysterious key, who they and a crooked detective seem to be very interested in locating. The publisher could have saved some space and condensed the first 75 pages into 5.

If you like to hear stories about young stupid men with the maturity of 12 year-olds with potty mouths, then this is the book for you. I couldn't stand it. Couldn't even finish it. A waste of time and money.

Very poor I have read this author's books before and found them enjoyable. This book was so sadistic and filled with violence and methods of abuse only someone who forgot their psyche meds would think of. After reading the chapters on having staples removed and cat punched I went to the back and read the ending.

"Caught Stealing" was touted by another reviewer as being in the Jeff Abbott genre. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Here is a loser/alky/dopehead who repeatedly journeys down those paths without any redeeming "heroic" traits. Bud the cat is a refreshing twist, UNTIL the author decides to have the cat abused. As a cat lover, I was finally and irrevocably turned off. Usually when I finish a book, I donate it to a library. Not this one. It went right into the trash on top of the bag of the day's cat litter box collections. As a former salesman for a large Eastern publisher, I would have had a VERY hard time selling this to a buyer. What WERE the agent and publisher thinking?

Very poor I have read this author's books before and found them enjoyable. This book was so sadistic and filled with violence and methods of abuse only someone who forgot their psyche meds would think of. After reading the chapters on having staples removed and cat punched I went to the back and read the ending.

"Caught Stealing" was touted by another reviewer as being in the Jeff Abbott genre. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Here is a loser/alky/dopehead who repeatedly journeys down those paths without any redeeming "heroic" traits. Bud the cat is a refreshing twist, UNTIL the author decides to have the cat abused. As a cat lover, I was finally and irrevocably turned off. Usually when I finish a book, I donate it to a library. Not this one. It went right into the trash on top of the bag of the day's cat litter box collections. As a former salesman for a large Eastern publisher, I would have had a VERY hard time selling this to a buyer. What WERE the agent and publisher thinking?

Caught Stealing by Charlie Huston. I downloaded this book free to my Kindle in hopes of finding more authors whose work I like. Unfortunately, this book falls far short. I certainly won't be reading the two others in the series, even at no cost.

This book's language is foul and repetitive. Constantly F this and F that. I'm a corrections officer, and my inmates don't speak that badly. The plot is beyond far-fetched. The writing style is staccato, with some sentences consisting of only "I. I. I." This book was a struggle to get through, and wasn't worth the effort.

Huston is a talented writer, but what good is that if half of the book had to be skipped? The bad language was not used for color or to underscore a point, but it was used so much it lost its punch in overkill. Besides this the book was way too bloody for my taste. I will never read Charlie Huston again. It is my fault actually.....I should have downloaded a sample of this book to my Kindle before paying for something I really hated reading.

Mindless violence, implausible plotting, juvenile dialogue, one-dimensional characters made of racial and ethnic stereotypes, a four-letter vocabulary, and a main character impossible to respect or even like.

I just finished Caught Stealing before picking up Six Bad Things. As much as I enjoyed Caught Stealing, I found Six Bad things to be repetitive and kind of long in the tooth. Basically this is an exact copy of the first installment of the book. Many parties vying to wrest control of about 4 million from a guy that doesn't really want it. But this guy has to face down the other players who would kill him in order to control the money.

This might have been a more enjoyable book for me if I had not picked it up the same day I finished the first one. Its sort of like doing a marathon of Die Hard films. One every couple of years is fun. Many in a row and the plots become ridiculous and the same.

THREE-AND-A-HALF STARS

Ever find yourself asking where JUST ENOUGH turns into WAY TOO MUCH? I know I wonder where the line falls between an extra hour's sleep on Saturday and pure laziness, between adding an interesting side project and falling into scattered slothfulness. Usually, this behavioral platting occurs when I'm trying to rationalize something away, to say that, hey, no one can really tell when an action moves from mildly indulgent to flat-out grotesque. (Logicians call this the Fallacy of the Beard, but I prefer to call it the Fallacy of Utterly Consuming an Entire Tin of Christmas Toffee Piece by Tiny Piece, which I know nothing about personally.) Such suppositions aren't entirely indulgent. In fact, questions about when violence changes from intense to exploitative spring up quite naturally while reading Charlie Huston's Caught Stealing.

Hank Thompson hasn't led a successful life. As an athletic high schooler, he seemed destined for the pro-baseball diamond. But a (literal) bad break destroyed his athletic hopes and a freak car crash robbed him of both his best friend and sense of purpose. Now an amiable alcoholic with chronically aching feet and always teetering on the edge of insolvency, he tends bar in New York. That is until two Russian guys with tiny hands show up and completely spoil his day. Funny, with small hands like that you wouldn't think they could do much damage, but they beat Hank, beat him without a reason, beat him until his kidney ruptured. Now minus an internal organ, he's trying to figure what he could've possibly done. The only thing out of the ordinary is his friend Russ asking him to watch his cat. Russ, who was nervous and agitated when he banged on his door. Russ, who didn't seem to know when he'd be returning to town ...

You don't need clairvoyance to foresee that Caught Stealing will plunge Hank in over his head very quickly. What may surprise you, though, is the brutality of his travails. This isn't a book to read before bed or at mealtimes. It's a thriller with a noir heart and ice water sluicing through its veins. It reads like the lovechild of Adrian McKinty's stream-of-consciousness hardboiled and Scott Sigler's tartare-raw horror. It's the sort of book where needle-nosed pliers come none-too-gently in contact with surgical staples, where a friendly feline gets roughed up in ways I'm unwilling to commit to print.

So if the novel's that intense, why bother reading? Good question. Fortunately, Huston intersperses the explosions of violence with long periods of character-building detail, which are immensely effective at making you care for Hank and friends long before the baseball bats and brass knuckles come out. Also, the gritty bits are largely free of explicit detail, allowing your imagination to fill in the worst parts. No doubt Caught Stealing will make many squirm. But even though its starkness scuffs at the line of appropriateness here and there, its engaging narrative manages to make the violence secondary, which is right where it belongs.

Charlie Huston is the real deal! If you have not yet discovered him and are attracted to dark, urban noirish, brutally violent novels, then run, don't walk, and secure a Charlie Huston novel. I have read all the Joe Pitt vampire series and have gone back to read the Hank Thompson trilogy which begins with "Caught Stealing." As I have said in previous reviews, Huston is not the easiest author to follow as he writes in a stream of consciousness prose style that does not include who is saying what nor does he use quotation marks. But his stylings are innovative and addictive, his dialogue is highly charged and believable, and he builds characters that you can "see" on the pages. While violence surrounds his characters, it flows from the storyline and is believable and appropriate for the plot and the pacing.

In "Caught Stealing," Hank Thompson is a low profile "everyman" currently serving a stint as a bartender while fighting his own personal demons, including alcohol. He agrees to baby sit his neighbor's cat which opens the door to a series of misadventures that will boggle the reader's mind. Two groups of miscreants are seeking a huge sum of money that Hank's neighbor stole from them. They have reason to believe Hank knows where it is or has access to it. Ultimately the two groups unite, then fragment again as they collectively and individually seek the huge payroll they think Hank has hidden. Hank eventually discovers the "key" to the mess he is in but cannot seem to discover a safe way to extricate himself from the violence prone thugs, including a crooked cop, who are hot on his tail.

Hank has to be the hard luck loser of the year in literature as everything that can go wrong for him, usually does. In short order, he is beaten so severely that a kidney is removed, kidnapped, beaten and threatened again, discovered his girlfriend tortured and murdered, and soon sees most of his remaining friends and acquaintances shot and killed in a killing spree in a local bar gone bad. There are times when this reader was so deeply engrossed in the pain, torment, and suffering Hank was undergoing that I had to stop and put the book down to catch my breath. Equally, the chase scenes and Hank's recurring bad luck will leave the reader gasping for some respite for the poor guy.

I have now read two of the Hank Thompson novels and all the Joe Pitt novels and I can say that Charlie Huston is an author that is now on my must read list. I unequivocally recommend his work to fans of this literary sub genre.

Caught Stealing is a vivid, bone crunching, visceral thrill-ride that is a lean, mean entertaining read. It's the kind of pulp fiction that Quentin Tarantino would be ideally suited to bring to the big screen: `Rated R due to scenes of extreme violence, coarse language, and animal cruelty'. The violence here is raw: `brass-knuckles and gun fights', rather than the "knife-wielding- ritual-murders' you find in serial killer novels.

My only criticism of this novel isn't necessarily a criticism at all. It's more of a limitation. The plot here is rudimentary stuff. Edgy writing, vivid characters, and page turning suspense can only elevate it so high. The plot is straight out of the `crime fiction playbook'. An innocent man inadvertently comes into possession of something that competing factions of bad guys want. Initially he has no idea what it could be and he suffers greatly for his ignorance. Eventually our good guy will find out what the object is, why it is so valuable, and turn the tables on the bad guys, often pitting the competing factions against one another before settling the final scores himself.

Sound familiar? Of course it does. It's a retread of dozens of similar novels/ films.

Despite its predictable story-line, and the inevitable transformation of our passive, `down-on-his luck' hero as he finds his `inner avenger', Caught Stealing is an enjoyable ride: provided you like your humor morbid, your violence graphic, and you're not prone to become too attached to secondary characters (who will inevitably meet a violent end before the final page is turned).

This is a great, fast paced, brutally violent, darkly funny, page-turner, that despite its predictable story-line manages to build suspense quite effectively near the end. I look forward to reading more novels from Charlie Huston.

Crime is probably my favorite genre, be it literature or film, and this book came strongly recommended. After letting it gather dust on the shelf for over a year, I finally dove into it and was instantly hooked. The story kicks off with protagonist Hank lounging on a quiet Mexican beach, hiding out from all manner of villains seeking him and the $4.5 million he made off with following a rather violent and complicated weekend in New York three years previously. I loved how the book just launched in without spending too much time explaining the specifics of what had brought Hank to this point. However, after about fifty pages I started to have a sneaking suspicion that this ultraviolent backstory had all been detailed elsewhere. So I checked online and discovered that this is the second book in a trilogy, and that the first (Caught Stealing) follows Hank's journey from nice catsitter to FBI Most Wanted list. Unfortunately, this violates one of my pet peeves, which is reading a series out of order. But already committed to the book, and having absorbed enough of Hank's backstory to make reading Caught Stealing redundant, I read on.

The book is basically one long chase scene, hurtling from Hank's hideaway on the Yucatan Peninsula, to Tijuana, to suburban California, to Vegas. Hank's problem is that the Russian mob has finally tracked him down and threatened the lives of his parents, so he's forced to make a move. A move that involves sending his cash to his one friend back in the U.S. and going back to his parents' house. It's not really clear why (other than sentiment), after being so cautious, careful, and crafty, he would make the colossally stupid move of showing up back home -- but the chase must go on. It's all very Tarantinoesque, or perhaps Pekinpaughesque -- there are Russian mobsters, a corporate blackmailer, a pair of psycho surf burnouts, and a truckload of white trash vigilantes after Hank and his loot. Many of these highly colorful supporting characters will die along the way, as will many of the equally memorable people Hank enlists in his bid to keep his parents safe. It's not just the outsize characters and violence that remind one of Tarantino though, it's also the dialogue, which is snappy and permeated with dark humor (which is also somewhat reminiscent of Elmore Leonard).

Ultimately, one's appreciation of the book will more or less depend on your taste for shoot 'em ups. That, and the extent to which you find Hank a sympathetic enough character to follow in his blood-soaked wake. Hank is enough of an everyman to be likable, but he's also killed in cold blood and caused the deaths of several innocent people. And while he wrestles with this at length, going so far to tattoo hash marks on himself to reflect the number of deaths he's caused, it feels kind of proforma, as if all the agonizing is there to keep him sympathetic to the reader. As entertaining as the lengthy chase is (for those who like such frenetic hijinks), my major problem is that the book shouldn't be a standalone. It ends in limbo, and one really has to read the next book (A Dangerous Man) to finish Hank's story. The trilogy should really have been published a a single longer volume and having it split up among three books feels like profiteering by the publisher (ie. I don't blame the author).

If you liked Jim Thompson's "The Killer Inside Me" and wondered where the heirs are, Charlie Huston's your man. "Caught Stealing" is the awesome start of an awesome pulp/noir trilogy starring Hank Thompson (hmm, "Thompson," coincidence?)
I actually read these books in the wrong order, stumbling across "A Dangerous Man" first and liking it so well that I sought out the first two. For maximum reading enjoyment, start with "Caught Stealing," then "Six Bad Things," then "A Dangerous Man." Though "Six ..." is the weaker of the three, it's to Huston's credit that he sustains the thing through three books and kept this reader wanting more all the way through. The books are a train ride: Once you get on, you do not want to get off, and it's best to have several hours set aside, such as a long flight, because once you start with Huston you're not going to want to stop. He's that good.
The books are liberally -- and I do mean liberally -- spiced with profanity, violence and drug use so if these things offend, choose something else.
The reviewer who called Huston "a poor man's Cormac McCarthy" is right on. While not so similar to the border trilogy, Huston's books get darn close to the standard of McCarthy's "No Country For Old Men," which is another outstanding read for fans of this genre.
Hank Thompson is a violent killer and a singularly sympathetic character and that's part of Huston's achievement. So is the narrative -- not a wrong move, not a bad piece of dialog, not an errant sentence ... it's just spot on. Oh, yeah, and it's also hilarious at times, laugh-out-loud funny. And, somehow, credibility is not stretched -- it's all so strangely plausible, under the circumstances.
This book, and its sequels, get the highest compliment I can give a book: I would happily read it again.

Hank Thompson was going to be a major league baseball player like Willie Mays or Tom Seaver who everyone would remember long after his career was over. By the time he was in High School, he had played on 2 Little League World Series teams, was the phenom of Southern California HS Baseball, and had Pro Scouts and College Recruiters at his games. All this ended when he was stepped on by a shortstop, who destroyed his ankle.

Hank's dad (a mechanic) helped him build the fastest car in the Valley. One night, while speeding around with his best friend Richard in the car, he wipes out a tree. He's wearing a seatbelt, Rich isn't; Rich is dead.

Hank heads east to get a new start in New York. He tends bar in the Village, and is one of his best customers. One night two guys come into the bar and for no reason, beat him so badly that he looses a kidney. The same night his next door neighbor, Russ, asks him to watch his cat, Bud.

Now things go really screwy. He chases by Asians, Russian Mafia, NYC cops, murderers, and guys who specialize in mid-western bank

robberies. I won't tell you any more of the plot, because that would spoil to many of the surprises.

Needless to say their is a lot, a lot of sardonic humor in this book. Which is sort of like a cross between Jimmy Buffett and Elmo Leonard, with just a touch of Monty Python (someone actually say, "blahblah is no more"). A couple of margaritas and so etoufe, and all bases are covered. Which is not a pun, because running through the whole book is a rehash of the end of the 2000 Major League baseball season.

If you enjoy unmitigated mayhem, you'll like this book. (There is a lot of f..king in this book, but it's all verbal.)

Granted some parts of Caught Stealing are a little bit unrealistic or farfetched but Huston has written a very fast paced thriller that is one of those rare reads that makes the reader forget about the outside world and keep turning the pages until the final page. I will definitely be on the lookout for other novels by Huston who has a similar story told through the main character's eyes style to Harlan Coben but with a fair bit more violence than Coben's work.

In Caught Stealing, once upon a time child sport prodigy Henry (Hank) Thompson through injury never accomplished his dreams and now works as a bartender. Being the nice guy that he is Hank reluctantly takes possession of his neighbour's cat while Russ his neighbour goes to visit his sick father. One night at work some disgruntled Russians beat Hank to a pulp over the poor quality of their drinks. Hank low on money decides to just suck it up and not go to hospital but when he lapses into a coma when keeping an appointment with his doctor about an unrelated foot problem and wakes up with one less kidney and other problems, he finds out the Russians did some serious damage. Shortly after release he is terrified to see them across the street while doing his laundry and hides on the roof of his apartment block as they ransack Russ' apartment across the hall. Upon reporting them to the police he learns through torture to himself and the cat that his neighbour wasn't the average guy he thought he was and that Russ gave him the cat for a reason. With those around him being killed until he hands over what the criminals want, Hank has no choice but to discover Russ' secret and win their deadly game.

Hank Thompson from Huston's sensational debut novel Caught Stealing returns in this even more violent, a little bit more farfetched but very entertaining sequel. If you have not yet started reading this book and haven't actually read Caught Stealing you should put this novel aside, find a copy of Caught Stealing and read it first as Six bad Things gives away substantial chunks of that novel's plot. Saying that though because it does give away this information, Six Bad Things can be enjoyed as a stand alone novel however you are missing out on a sensation read with Caught Stealing.

In Six bad Things, Hank is now living a quiet but comfortable existence in an isolated part of coastal Mexico with the cat (Bud) and the four point something million dollars. One day his anonymity is shattered by a Russian backpacker named Mikey who wants to blackmail Hank, the price for his silence, one million dollars! Hank isn't thrilled but accepts this scenario until Mikey tries to up the stakes by threatening Hank's parents. Mikey learns that Hank is no longer the pushover he used to be and corrupt Mexican police convince Hank he must flee back to the USA. So Hank posts the cash to Vegas and sets out for the border on a journey where he will soon learn, everything so far has been a picnic to what he is about to endure!

Six Bad Things isn't as smooth as read as Caught Stealing and to be honest doesn't quite meet the high benchmark of the first novel. There's a lot more violence in this one as well as high levels of drug use by Hank and others. Still hooks you to keep turning the pages though. Nothing will stop me checking out the third novel in this gripping series!

Much like his series character Hank Thompson, Charlie Huston is a man who sometimes operates under the influence. Where Hank indulges in illicit substances, Huston slips into overly slavish imitations of his crime fiction forebears: Elmore Leonard, Quentin Tarantino, George Pelecanos. The voice of little Charlie Huston can get buried amid all that clamor, but it's a voice that gets clearer and stronger as Huston develops as a novelist. It's a voice well worth hearing. In "Six Bad Things," Hank is hiding out in Mexico after the slaughter of the previous novel, "Caught Stealing." It wouldn't be much of a crime thriller if all the hero did was swim and get toked up, tan and tattooed, so someone comes looking for the loot Hank stole from the Russian mob, and soon he's on the run again. That hot pursuit pretty much continues thru the rest of the novel. Huston's not long on plot, but he is big on nonstop, adrenalized, bullet-riddled thrill rides. It would be a four-star adventure, but I must deduct one star for a seriously ridiculous ending.

Another novel about money causing trouble. Everyone wants the money, and it gets people killed. Some people think $4.5 million is worth killing for.

Hank is an alcoholic bartender in New York City with few prospects. He is still a Giants fan, and the story is wound aroung the end of the baseball season as the Giants struggle to come from behind.

His neighbor, Russ, had to make a sudden trip, and asked Hank to look after his cat, and that gets Hank involved in murderous activities as very rough people look for something that Russ had. Russ has been a bad boy, and tried to run away with money that had been laundered with his help. Now it has hit the fan, and Hank blunders about trying to save himself while he causes other people's deaths. It is not a good thing to know Hank.

It all comes down to who will get the money, and what will happen to the cat. Hank is getting some cuts and bruises, even losing a kidney, but he keeps on truckin.' Some events may seem unlikely, but the reader will stay interested to see what becomes of Hank, the cat, the money, Russ, and the various bad guys. The story is written in a narrative form.

The reader might also try "Walking Money" by James O. Born, and "Windfall" by James Magnuson.

Hank Thompson, protagonist of Charlie Huston's slam-bang neo-noir, has not had an easy life. From a baseball accident that ended a promising career to a car crash that left him unable to drive to the bottles of booze that fill his apartment, this strangely gentle man never really caught a break. He was doing OK, though, until his neighbor left town and gave Hank his cat to watch... and the key hidden at the bottom of the cat's litter box. Various people come looking for the key, and that's when the fun begins.

The novel stands up next to James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia or Scott Smith's A Simple Plan, in both the dark settings and the violence. The seedy world of the characters includes beatings, shootings, robbery, torture, and worse yet. In this environment, it's not a question of whether a good man will go bad, but the manner in which it will happen, and how bad he'll go. Huston's narration and use of the first-person viewpoint is gripping, conveying the thoughts and fears of Hank Thompson very well. The plot twists and turns to some extent, but the action and violence of this story are what will keep you reading until 2 a.m.

Caught Stealing was a fantastic novel from the beginning to the very end. I started reading this book and literally (and figuratively) did not put it down until it was over, several hours later.

There is an all star cast of characters that it is impossible not desire to learn about their motivations and anticipate their next moves. They are so unique it is almost laughable... almost. The pacing of the story is extremely fast and furious and the dialogue is sharp. I could not help but be compassionate to some of the characters.

The plot is gritty, dark, and mildly disturbing in some parts. This is one of those books that sucked me in from the first page and took me for the ride of a lifetime with two hands clinching my throat. The situations posed in the book test the characters in every sense. The main character is especially real, and I truly felt for each painstaking decision he had to make while his life spiraled out of control. I loved how just when I thought his life could not get any worse, it did... by leaps and bounds. This book was a tour de force. I highly recommend this book for noir buffs, action junkies, and really... anyone.

I cannot say enough how glad I am I discovered this author. I anticipate finishing Six Bad Things tonight and A Dangerous Man the following night, because the story was that compelling.

J.Stoner

I don't think this continuation in the series was as good as "Caught Stealing", but I couldn't wait to read it. This novel picks up several years (about 3 I think) after Hank's departure from New York with the 4 million. Hank is now living in Mexico, part owner/silent partner of a bar, swimming and attempting to heal from the mess that went down years before, when a Russian backpacker comes to town. Again we see Hank caught up in circumstances beyond his control. Hank is now not only fighting for his life, but the ones he loves (his parents). We ride again in Hank's rollercoaster of misfortune. Will he survive? Get the second novel in the series and enjoy. Although not as good as the first one, Huston deserves credit for being gritty and creative. What I wondered at the end of the novel, was would we see ever see the cat again?

Hank Thompson is a regular law abiding guy with some original, yet regular problems. While at work one evening, bartending in Manhattan, he is beaten up by two Russian thugs. He soon realizes that this wasn't really about the drinks he served. Hank becomes an infamous and wanted criminal when fate brings a line-up of bad guys chasing after him, all of which are after something that doesn't even belong to him.

Caught Stealing is the first book in the Hank Thompson trilogy, and the first novel I've ever read written by Charlie Huston. It was violent, fast paced, and at times, funny, very funny. The prose read quick and easy, even without quotation marks. Certainly, this will not be my last Charlie Huston novel. Can't wait to find out what happens to this likable protagonist in the next addition.

I recently wrote a review of a book (The Traveler), and expressed how frustrated I was to find out at the end it is the first in a trilogy. It left me hanging, and I didn't like it enough to get the next book.

I have to say, it's the opposite with Caught Stealing. I finished this book and just found out in these very reviews there is a sequel, which I can't wait to read. This one wraps up nicely on its own if you don't want to make the trilogy commitment.

Caught Stealing is a raw, visceral story of a wrongly (and violently) targeted everyman and his transformation into someone different. How a guy who loves baseball and his Mom and Dad believably makes this transformation through a violent journey is a testament to Huston's writing. Hank, the main character, takes his abuse (and it's a LOT of abuse) relatively in stride, and with a certain calm that I found laced with a dark humor. A few of the situations are truly gruesome (staples, anyone?), but Huston doesn't get gratuitous with his violence.

Caught Stealing is a quick read, and hard to put down. I can't wait to read Six Bad Things.

Caught Stealing is a must to read before this one as you has to understand how this laid back guy became the man he is in the 2nd of the trilogy books on Hank. I am W/F, 60 and love this series. They are gritty as has been described, but with such wit thrown around it softens the blow. The characters are all so well brought out I can see them as clearly as watching a movie. Mr. Houston's writing style is so, so, so, catchy to the mind. I am so delighted to have found Mr. Houston's works and plan on reading them all one after another. Smart writing and stories with more twists and back to back oh dang it situations. Very little down time for Hank or the reader.

A very powerful narrative voice is what drives this debut novel which just so happens to be one of the best of the year so far. The author, Charlie Huston, is also a screenwriter and as expected the dialogue is dead on.
Hank Thompson is a bartender on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His life has been a bit of a disappointment in that he was slated to become a major league baseball player until he broke his leg. His humdrum existence comes to an abrupt end when Russ, a neighbor, leaves his cat with him while he visits his sick father for a few days or a few weeks. That night Hank gets so severely beaten up in a bar by two thugs that he requires surgery to remove a damaged kidney. This is just the beginning as Hank is chased, beaten, tortured for an unknown reason. As friends start to die, Hank realizes he must get to the bottom of the problem as his life depends on it.
Hank is a complex character. He is tormented by an accident in the past and, in a sense, continues to punish himself with guilt. He is a sympathetic figure to the reader in that it seems everybody else in the book is evil. Rooting for this underdog drives the rapid pacing as the thrills continue one after the other. It is difficult to put the book down until the highly satisfying conclusion. With the superb characterizations, realistic dialogue and riveting story line, CAUGHT STEALING is one of the most memorable debuts this year.

Some of my favorite flicks involved extraordinary ordeals encountered by ordinary people: wrong place wrong person scenarios. "Caught Stealing" was just that sort of novel. Henry Thompson was introduced as an alcoholic bartender anguishing through his adult years after two wretched life-changing events. First, a younger Henry (Hank) had seen his dreams of baseball stardom smashed by a career ending accident to his leg (clue: the title of the novel has something to do with baseball). Second, Hank accidentally killed his best friend when he swerved his car to avoid a baby calf and catapulted his childhood buddy through the windshield into a tree. Eventually, Hank escaped his hometown in California and picked New York to live out the rest of his pitiful existence. One day a neighbor (and an acquaintance) asked Hank to take care of his cat so he could visit his ailing father. From one seemingly meaningless/innocent favor all hell broke loose and Hank's nightmarish existence dropped a few more levels deeper into the abyss. Hank found himself the target of various bad guys, each with their own unique personality traits (I'd love to pick all the actors to play these guys in any potential movie) and each with their own lethal techniques of assault and torture. The action packed thriller was so much fun to read that I completed it in two days. Hank's heart-pounding adventure was pure pulp fiction bliss, and I could only picture Quentin Tarantino making a movie adaptation worthy of the super prose provided by Charlie Huston's pure-adrenaline-laced story unburdened by needless evocative details. Fancier authors sometimes get caught up in writing hundreds of descriptive sentences on unnecessary particulars in order to show off their command of the English language via the utilization of wacky adjectives, tacky adverbs and esoteric verbs. Trust me; this would be a fantastic beach book. I loved it and I can't wait until it is transformed into an action-packed movie extravaganza.

Jay's Grade: A

May 21, 2004

...but i absolutely must
give this book my endorsement.
huston approaches the crime adventure
in a way that is so personal...i mean, you feel
like you've just met this engaging person who then proceeds
to tell you this fascinating tale.....i'm just about an 8th of the way
through the second book "six bad things"....i can't remember
ever having shredded through a book as fast as i did
"caught stealing" & i'm well on my way to doing
the same with the following installment...
it's graphic, but sensitive.
really great writing.
really fun reading.
it's not gonna offer
you the philisophical
puzzle piece that finally
answers all of yer questions
about the universe, but.........
it's a fun, suspenseful crime novel.

The Author Charlie Huston did an excellent job writing this e-book. The e-book focuses on the main character Hank Thompson on the run. He is on the run from the Russian Mob that is trying to catch him. They want their money back. The Author does a good job setting the scenes in Mexico and bringing believable characters into the story. The Author does a good job connecting the scenes from Caught Stealing. The Author does a good job moving the story along at a good pace. I have read every e-book this Author has published and liked them all. I have and would recommend this e-book to a friend.

Very very impressive book. One of the blurbs on the backcover "reads like The Maltese Falcon on crack" is pretty

accurate. High octane book where a nice-guy bartender, Hank Thompson, through no fault of his own (or maybe because he mixes a bad cosmo) is first tortured and then on the run from a gang of ruthless thugs, including one of NY's finest, all in pursuit of the 4 1/2 million bucks. Lots of twists, lots of

interesting little mannerisms such as when Hank is on the phone with the corrupt cop trying to work out a deal, and then you have the awkward moment at the end where Hank finds himself having to say "good-bye". The writing in this is near pitch-perfect, and what make this even more impressive is that it's Huston's first book.

Meet Henry "Hank" Thompson (ex-high school baseball player/star turned alcoholic and all around nice guy), add a favor for a friend (to watch a neighbor's cat "Bud", who ends up being the "key" to the mystery) + a crooked/sadistic cop + some sweat-suit-wearing Russian bad guys + countless other bad guys (two extremely bad brothers)+ a secret key (hidden in Bud's crate) that opens a storage room with 4.4 MILLION dollars + 1 lost kidney + countless gun fights and lots of killing = a novel that will leave you breathless until the final scene. Some will survive and some won't. People will do things they never thought that they would, but overall the theme is that sometime you can get "caught up" in events that are beyond your control. Both visceral and gritty, this novel leaves you wanting more.

The Author Charlie Huston did an excellent job writing this e-book. The story starts out in California and crosses over to Ney York City. The e-book focuses on the main character Hank Thompson and the decisions he makes in his life. The Author does a good job setting the scenes and bringing believable characters into the story. The Author does a good job connecting the scenes and moving the story along at a good pace. I have read every e-book this Author has published and liked them all. I have and would recommend this e-book to a friend.

In Caught Stealing, Charlie Huston's electrifying debut, readers are introduced to Hank Thompson, a washed up former baseball player who seems content to drink until his kidneys throw in the bar towel. When Hank agrees to watch his neighbor's cat, he unwittingly inherits a highly sought after item that threatens to tear apart his already fragile existence. Chased through the streets of New York City by a colorful cast of villains, including two Russian gangsters in matching track suits, a Samoan enforcer named Bolo, and one seriously corrupt cop, Thompson must stay alive long enough to find out what they want and how to deliver it before time runs out.

Despite the story's relentless pace and excessive violence, the author infuses his hero with enough humanity to keep the reader fully engaged. A rising star in the hard-boiled crime genre, Charlie Huston writes uncensored, rapid-fire dialogue that positively jumps off the page. Caught Stealing is the first installment in an outstanding trilogy that is already a cult phenomenon in literary circles. It is truly an absolute gem of a thriller that will leave readers breathless and begging for more.

From the teaser blurbs, you would think "Caught Stealing" would be a humorous romp of a crime thriller. You would be wrong. I am surprised I even finished the story, because the unrelenting violence and lack of redemption were just too much for me. It's possible I stuck with it because of my concern for the cat, who seemed to have more character development than the many people who ended up dead, which is disturbing in its own right.

This is the first in a trilogy, and while I am interested in Bud the cat's continuing involvement in the story, I can't handle reading more gratuitously violent narrative, so this is it for me.

If you like action -- and gun fights, profanity, alcohol and drug abuse, black humor, torture and a cat with a broken leg don't bother you -- this is your book.

Hank Thompson is a thirtysomething ex-Californian with a checkered past biding his time tending bar and turning himself into an alcoholic in a gin mill in Manhattan's Lower East Side. A neighbor asks him to babysit his cat and Hank agrees. Then all hell breaks loose.

Before he knows it, he's on the run, stitched up and missing a kidney, pursued by both a gang led by a dirty cop and two demented brothers, all of whom want a key taped inside the cat's travel box, which is a ticket to millions in cash.

As the bodies pile up and Hank makes one narrow escape after another, he manages to find time to call his parents in California to assure them he is OK, take care of the cat and follow the progress of his beloved Giants on various newspapers and TV sets he encounters.

Charlie Huston's dialogue-writing is impressive. Each character has his own voice.

I can't wait to get to the other two books in the trilogy.

Charlie Huston's "Caught Stealing" is certainly a mixed bag of a debut novel. He unquestionably has good writing skills, adroitly able to create graphic verbal pictures. His plot however is studded with superfluous violence beyond essential in the advancement of the plot. The inclusion of cruelty to animals strikes a raw nerve.

His inculpable protagonist Henry "Hank" Thompson was a talented ex-California high school baseballer. His potential sterling professional career got short circuited due to a crippling leg injury during a game. He eventually migrated across the country settling in New York City, where he worked in a Lower East Side joint as a bartender.

Hank was convinced to care for a cat named Bud by his neighbor Russ, who needed to travel to Rochester to attend to his dying father. Bud quickly became a prized companion for him. Shortly thereafter, the poor slob Thompson was inexplicably beaten so severely in the bar by two Russian gangsters it necessitated the removal of a kidney. He did however remember discovering a key hidden in the carrying case of Bud.

The key was the focus of two opposing criminal groups who proceeded to beat and torture Thompson attempting to acquire it. The groups, one led by crooked cop, detective Lieutenant Roman and the other consisting of two man crime wave, cowboy garbed brothers Ed and Paris proceed to kill all of Thompson's friends from the bar including his one time girlfriend, Yvonne.

When neighbor Russ reappears he informs Hank that the key opens a storage locker containing a king's ransom of ill gotten cash that Thompson realizes he wants for himself. He proceeds to mete out his own brand of violence partially in retribution but mainly attempting to thwart the others from securing the hefty hoard.

If you like Elmore Leonard or James Ellroy, chances are you'll Charlie Huston's debut effort.

This is a great vacation book, where you can read a dozen pages or so, and the jump in the pool or head out for dinner if you are on the go a lot. Also good for the nightstand, though you may stay up later than you'd planned. It's gripping enough that you'll probably blaze through it in under 6 hours total.

Huston doesn't take 100 pages to develop the characters. You dive right into the story and learn about the dark, oddball, quirky people who reside in the underbelly of society. Their actions tell us as much about them as a long monologue ever could.

This book pays off instantly and never lets you go. If that isn't what you want in a crime thriller, I don't know what is.

Caught Stealing and Six Bad Things were the first two Charlie Huston book I ever read (back to back) and I've loved his work ever since! Hank Thompson is an awesome character in the wrong place at the wrong time and nothing seems to go his way from that point on. Everyone has had that moment when someone asks you to help them out (or in this case, dumps something on Hank) that you don't want to do, but it usually turns out OK. Not so for Hank Thompson as his neighbor's cat will get him into trouble with every seedy character in town!

Huston's noir style and the realism of his characters is unmatched. The violence is very brutal, but remains true to life and never goes over the top. Do yourself a favor and buy this book!!

Picks up where "Caught Stealing" left off. Charlie is still trying to get out of the trouble caused by the load of cash he "happened in to." I could definitely see this made into a movie...it's that captivating. The story never leaves you bored, disinterested, or hurrying up to finish. I savored the book, beginning to end. The only reason I didn't give it five stars is because of the way it ends. The ending left me with a feeling of dread and hoping I'm wrong about the third and last installment about Charlie's life.

Honestly, there are so many things I like about this new writer's books that I'm not sure where to begin, so I'll start with one of the things I like the very best, which is this feeling I have when I'm reading him that if I were the main character, or if something like this were to happen in my life, that this is exactly what it would feel like. The characters in his books aren't these outlandish stereotypes you've come across countless times in other books and films, but they are people you know and have known in your life. And Mr. Huston has also managed to write a brand of pulp that's really exciting, at times also very funny, and at the same time completely believeable. There's a simplicity to his writing style that's just so digestable. He also has a way of using language that's just, simply, really damn cool. Honestly, that's just the best way to describe it. And if you don't like fun in your pulp, you might as well go back to the the store home page and do a new search because you're going to be disappointed with Huston's books. Charlie Huston feels a little bit like a Jim Thompson for the 21st century with one exception: Thompson's voice - the voice of the storyteller - is one that paints a picture of man who's truly so troubled and insane that one often feels a certain distance from him and an inability to sympathize. Whereas Huston's voice isn't the voice of someone who's so far away from normalcy as to be unrecognizable, but instead, his voice, his thoughts seem somehow to strike so close to home as to be very much like your own.

I actually read "Six Bad Things" before I read this, because at the time I had no idea it was part of a trilogy. I thought the book was fantastic as a standalone book anyway!

I absolutely LOVED this book. I had a very hard time putting it down and all I could think of was when I would have time to read more. Never a dull moment or time when you feel what you're reading need to be skipped over. Absolutely makes you want to read the next book. Henry Thompson is also a very likeable anti-hero, you root for him all the way to the end.

In reading other reviews, yes, there is very slight animal abuse. I love cats, and trust me, don't worry. Highly reccommended!!!!

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's perfect for the cross atlantic or cross country business trip, the summer vacation poolside read, or the daily commute on the train. The only part you'll have a hard time with is putting it down when you get to your station. That said, it will give you something to look forward to at the end of your day and the return commute. If you have a problem with the Tarantino movies, this book's probably not for you. But if you like action thrillers with a truly unique voice, you'll really enjoy this book.
roman

A gripping novel from the first page to the end. The violence is graphic, but fits with the characters involved. It is ye olde "guy accidentally gets stuck in the middle of a bad situation with very bad people," but I found it to be fresh and vibrant. I also loved the fact that the main character is trying to follow the travails of the New York Mets at the close of the season, while fighting to stay alive and figure out who are the good and who are the bad guys. Overall, an exciting read. By the way, my teenage daughter read the first few pages and decided to order her own copy from the store. I had gotten my copy from the library.