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Cons
Ex-con Frank Cullen is trying to straighten up his act after serving time in a Florida prison, but his boss's wife and her younger sister want to pull him back into the robbery business.
231 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 31, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 20, 2022
Timothy Watts has clearly read and loved the crime novels of Elmore Leonard, and CONS, his first novel, lands somewhere between sincere homage and outright impersonation, down to the artfully distributed sentence fragments. Which is not a bad thing: CONS is a good novel, tightly plotted and stylishly rendered, full of familiar characters we're glad to see and plausible twists by the cubic ton, and it passes pleasantly enough. There's Cully, the bad guy who's maybe more good than bad; Benny, the bad guy who seems to be all bad; Michelle, the bad girl who also seems to be all bad; and Kristin, the good girl who's working out how bad she wants to be. All terrific company on the page. You can find rough approximations of each of these characters, along with Herb, the rich swaggering mark who's maybe not as much of a mark as everybody thinks he is, in just about every Leonard novel. Which is fne, and hey, if you're going to steal, you might as well steal from the best, right?
It's a four-star experience, rather than a five-star one, for two reasons: one, the derivativeness; and two, a certain anxiety tic by a first-time author: a need to have the characters explain what they're feeling and thinking when a more confident author — say, Elmore Leonard — would trust their readers to work that out for themselves. Leonard believed in what author Peter Abrahams, another master practitioner of this particular bit of craft, calls "the power of the oblique" — the ability to the author to suggest and the reader to interpret, for a more intensely engaged reading experience.
Watts, instead, injects his otherwise streamlined narrative with unnecessary asides like: "Cully was thinking he should get out of there. Leave the whole fucking town behind. A little pissed off because all he'd tried to do, since he got out of Raiford, was keep a low profile. Not get involved with a lot of things that he knew would get him in trouble." Based on what preceded this passage, this is something the closely engaged reader could — and should — have easily filled in on their own. And Watts at times seems aware of it: "It gave Cully a headache. Thinking about all the possibilities." Here's hoping that awareness manifested itself in Watts' later novels.
That shouldn't take away from the clever plotting and perfect pacing of this novel, or the appealingly laconic way the characters go about their business through their third-person points of view. The first third of CONS introduces the players; the second act sets the stakes and forms alliances; and the third is a crazy whirl of ambushes and double-crosses, and each of the three is entertaining as hardboiled h*ll. And that should be the final word.
It's a four-star experience, rather than a five-star one, for two reasons: one, the derivativeness; and two, a certain anxiety tic by a first-time author: a need to have the characters explain what they're feeling and thinking when a more confident author — say, Elmore Leonard — would trust their readers to work that out for themselves. Leonard believed in what author Peter Abrahams, another master practitioner of this particular bit of craft, calls "the power of the oblique" — the ability to the author to suggest and the reader to interpret, for a more intensely engaged reading experience.
Watts, instead, injects his otherwise streamlined narrative with unnecessary asides like: "Cully was thinking he should get out of there. Leave the whole fucking town behind. A little pissed off because all he'd tried to do, since he got out of Raiford, was keep a low profile. Not get involved with a lot of things that he knew would get him in trouble." Based on what preceded this passage, this is something the closely engaged reader could — and should — have easily filled in on their own. And Watts at times seems aware of it: "It gave Cully a headache. Thinking about all the possibilities." Here's hoping that awareness manifested itself in Watts' later novels.
That shouldn't take away from the clever plotting and perfect pacing of this novel, or the appealingly laconic way the characters go about their business through their third-person points of view. The first third of CONS introduces the players; the second act sets the stakes and forms alliances; and the third is a crazy whirl of ambushes and double-crosses, and each of the three is entertaining as hardboiled h*ll. And that should be the final word.
April 30, 2021
A crime caper with a collection of the meanest, greediest and most self-centered characters one can find. The dialog and twisty plot reminds one of Elmore Leonard. Much fun following them trying to out-grift each other.
February 14, 2015
RATING: 4.25
If you are a fan of noir, you are going to be thrilled with this delightful debut novel by Timothy Watts. You wouldn’t expect a book set in Beaufort, South Carolina, to be as edgy as Cons turns out to be. The lead character, Frank Cullen (“Cully”) has been released from Raiford Prison in Florida after serving a 5-year term for armed robbery. Although he carried a gun during his robberies, he never used it and indeed feared the fact that he might have to. He’s taken a job as a mechanic in Beaufort, but the owner, Dave Ross, has stiffed him out of his wages. When Cully demands payment, he gets a little carried away and pulverizes Ross and another man, Earl Marsh. As a result, he’s put into the local jail. Fortunately (well, maybe not) for Cully, he is bailed out by a local well-to-do farmer by the name of Herb Dorrance. Dorrance hires him to serve as a chauffeur. Dorrance is a real mean piece of work who delights in playing mind games on others. He tries to keep Cully on a short leash by threatening to invent some malfeasance that will land him back in jail if Cully doesn’t do whatever he wants him to do.
Dorrance has a delectable wife by the name of Michelle whose first husband, Benny, also served at Raiford Prison and is the brother of Earl Marsh. Michelle has had it with Herb and his evil doings. She and Benny plan a daring robbery of Dorrance’s diamonds from the local bank. But rather than risking their necks by doing the robbery themselves, Michelle comes up with a plan to get Cully to do it for them. At the same time, Cully has become involved with Michelle’s sister, Kristin, who is turned on by his past. It is her deepest desire that she and Cully pull off a bank heist together. Cully is indeed a popular guy. Herb wants him to kill Benny. And Cully, well all he wanted to do was play it straight, maybe open a restaurant or something.
The job is planned, and as may be expected, the plans go awry. The fact is that nobody trusts anybody else, and everyone is double crossing one another. How it all plays out is great good fun for the reader with many unexpected moments.
In addition to weaving a nicely suspenseful plot, Watts has done an excellent job of characterization. Each of the characters is unique and well developed, and each acts exactly as they should. The only negative is that they all seem extremely cognizant of one another’s motivations which didn’t feel realistic. But the way that the resolution plays out is totally believable.
An impressive debut and a very enjoyable read.
If you are a fan of noir, you are going to be thrilled with this delightful debut novel by Timothy Watts. You wouldn’t expect a book set in Beaufort, South Carolina, to be as edgy as Cons turns out to be. The lead character, Frank Cullen (“Cully”) has been released from Raiford Prison in Florida after serving a 5-year term for armed robbery. Although he carried a gun during his robberies, he never used it and indeed feared the fact that he might have to. He’s taken a job as a mechanic in Beaufort, but the owner, Dave Ross, has stiffed him out of his wages. When Cully demands payment, he gets a little carried away and pulverizes Ross and another man, Earl Marsh. As a result, he’s put into the local jail. Fortunately (well, maybe not) for Cully, he is bailed out by a local well-to-do farmer by the name of Herb Dorrance. Dorrance hires him to serve as a chauffeur. Dorrance is a real mean piece of work who delights in playing mind games on others. He tries to keep Cully on a short leash by threatening to invent some malfeasance that will land him back in jail if Cully doesn’t do whatever he wants him to do.
Dorrance has a delectable wife by the name of Michelle whose first husband, Benny, also served at Raiford Prison and is the brother of Earl Marsh. Michelle has had it with Herb and his evil doings. She and Benny plan a daring robbery of Dorrance’s diamonds from the local bank. But rather than risking their necks by doing the robbery themselves, Michelle comes up with a plan to get Cully to do it for them. At the same time, Cully has become involved with Michelle’s sister, Kristin, who is turned on by his past. It is her deepest desire that she and Cully pull off a bank heist together. Cully is indeed a popular guy. Herb wants him to kill Benny. And Cully, well all he wanted to do was play it straight, maybe open a restaurant or something.
The job is planned, and as may be expected, the plans go awry. The fact is that nobody trusts anybody else, and everyone is double crossing one another. How it all plays out is great good fun for the reader with many unexpected moments.
In addition to weaving a nicely suspenseful plot, Watts has done an excellent job of characterization. Each of the characters is unique and well developed, and each acts exactly as they should. The only negative is that they all seem extremely cognizant of one another’s motivations which didn’t feel realistic. But the way that the resolution plays out is totally believable.
An impressive debut and a very enjoyable read.
September 22, 2020
This is a story that's been done hundreds, maybe thousands, of times. It was a staple of the pulps, done very well by writers like Charles Williams, Peter Rabe, Harry Whittington, etc. But this is an update of the form. It's a prose that sounds different and, even though it's more than 25 years old, more current than those past masters. It suggests a modern and vaguely regional vernacular that is generally very readable and even convincing (although the constant start/stops around a "what" get to be a bit annoying). Like many movie remakes, Cons is a very satisfying take on a popular and sometimes overworked story.
Among the blurbs on the back cover I noticed two that called it noir. That struck me as ridiculous. I don't know any definition of noir that would include a novel in which (spoiler alert) the protagonist finds love and is projected to live happily ever after. That quibble aside, as a matter of personal taste, I like it better for avoiding the bitter hopelessness of true noir.
Among the blurbs on the back cover I noticed two that called it noir. That struck me as ridiculous. I don't know any definition of noir that would include a novel in which (spoiler alert) the protagonist finds love and is projected to live happily ever after. That quibble aside, as a matter of personal taste, I like it better for avoiding the bitter hopelessness of true noir.
April 30, 2021
A crime caper with a collection of the meanest, greediest and most self-centered characters one can find. The dialog and twisty plot reminds one of Elmore Leonard. Much fun following them trying to out-grift each other.
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May 11, 2010Beaufort SC mystery
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews