I have read Larry Beinhart before (American Hero, later renamed Wag the Dog: A Novel, like the derived movie, and Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin, a non-fiction analysis of mainstream media). This book was his first attempt at a pure mystery and surprisingly it won the Edgar (Allen Poe) Award for best mystery of 1986.This book is also the first of the Tony Cassella trilogy, and in fact I purchased the bundled set The Tony Cassella Mysteries: No One Rides for Free, You Get What You Pay For, and Foreign ExchangeThe premise is sophisticated and unique enough to arouse interest, involving corporate fraud. The dialogue is crisp and witty as expected for novels of this genre. Beinhart is a good writer, but there are some drawbacks in this first mystery novel. For one, the anti-hero is not really 'anti' as much as naughty. He has relations with four women in the story, and instead of adding spice, these philanderings actually bog down the story. Then there are the totally unnecessary insertions of what seems to be poetry, which borders on awful. In my opinion, editing out much of this extraneous stuff would have increased the momentum of the plot.But, yeah, okay, I liked it. I'll need a break from Tony Cassella before I read his next exploit (which I'll read only because I bought the package).(Note - the Kindle version has 'me' instead of 'the' in many instances throughout - rather annoying but I got used to it)
