Raw Deal

John Deal #2

by Les Standiford

Accidentally discovering a sinister plot by sugar cane magnate and Cuban e+a7migre+a7 Vincent Luis Torreno, construction businessman John Deal learns of Torreno's dream of a free Cuba and sugar monopoly. Reprint.

Genres: Mystery

Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Les Standiford is a historian and author and has since 1985 been the Director of the Florida International University Creative Writing Program. Standiford has been awarded the Frank O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Fiction, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and belongs to the Associated Writing Programs, Mystery Writers of America, and the Writers Guild.

Reviews

[Thrillers R Us · Rating 4 out of 5]

Landsliding Herbert Hoover three years after the start of the Great Depression and cruising into the White House in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt did more right away than coin THE phrase to label the grave economic downturn that burned across the globe for ten years until 1939. Relief, recovery, and reform sat atop FDR's to-do list, namely in the form of a spate of domestic programs to heal America. The FDIC, Social Security, the 40 hr work week and SEC emerged from the New Deal, though as with almost anything, Historians still can't agree whether or not the New Deal was a success. Delivering readers a new Deal, RAW DEAL promises that readers are looking at a new man. A new book, new adventure, a new deal. Working too hard and taking life too serious, the new John Deal is chill and runs wild all over South Florida, dodging hatchet men, firestarters, bruisers, and stray lead. Chewing up wattage Las Vegas style, RAW DEAL is a novel so fierce that anything might happen. At any time. And does.

Plunked into the greater Miami Metro area in a time about a year after Hurricane Andrew hit Dade County, RAW DEAL sees John Deal progressing from builder to rebuilder thanks to the natural disaster and hard-core insurance money. Incidentally there are also lots of Marielitos, camps, and a Cuban wave, though without the pizzazz of Rebenga, a creampuff Caddy or SCARFACE himself. Just a lot of people doing what they need to do to move up the food chain in a place that was the place to grow sugar if it can't be done in Cuba. And there was lots of money in sugar. Deep in the chaos, John Deal, a straight arrow who believes that you go out and do your work, find somebody to love, hold on tight, and hope that you can find cover when the crapstorm hits. And hit it does, in form of the Cuban expatriate community, a Cuba leaning cult organized and acting worse than Scientologists, apparently. Without reading DONE DEAL (Book #1 of the series), all the gentle reader knows is that it's been two years since calamity visited upon Deal & fam, he's got PTSD-like flashes and there were true believers belonging to get-rich-quick cult whose path he involuntarily crossed, presenting threat to life and limb. RAW DEAL is Deal screwing up again and maybe someone could tell him why, for he believes what is visited upon him is of his own making, just that he hasn't figured out how.

A far cry from RAW DEAL starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, 'now' hailed by the Social Media crowd as a vaunted '80s action epic, RAW DEAL, published 8 years later deep into the 1990s, is a novel that has a lot going on; lotsa characters and side plots that leave the reader in lurch until at least a third of the way through, not even attempting to point where all of the goings-on are headed or even what's happening. The cover blurb by Stephen King promises that "Standiford gives great South Florida crime story," meaning unfortunately that it's nowhere near that. It's not quite certain which book Stephen King read, a great South Florida crime story it isn't. It's not even anything close to Carl Hiaasen or Tim Dorsey yarns. RAW DEAL takes the 90s theme of 'stuff happens to normies' and elevates it to a whole new level. It's a construction dude with a retired cop friend, who takes up so much real estate in the narrative that it should've been called RAW DRISCOLL and not RAW DEAL.

Ultimately about land theft and crooked politicians, the oldest scams out there, RAW DEAL is a novel about ruthless ambition, to get more than more and asking for seconds. Exploring the concepts of retaliation, retribution and revenge, RAW DEAL delves into matters deemed in some parts of South Florida as more important than money or petty politics of Americans: dethroning Castro and taking back Cuba. Not all doom and gloom, book two in the John Deal series boasts of cleverly camouflaged shout outs to WUTHERING HEIGHTS, 52 PICK-UP and PULP FICTION, balancing things with witty phrases and axioms the likes of 'the Salsa brigade', body-language Esperanto, never throw good money after bad, don't base investments on emotion, love & money are the two reason why people kill, and Castro's convertible. Asserting that people will do just about anything if enough money is on the line and asking what else could happen in this awful, forlorn place, RAW DEAL is a book that tries to speak of the beauty and the anguish of everyday life in a grandiose way. Stick with it, everybody, the narrative will take you to hell in a handcart. Deal with it.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Deal is a very appealing hero. he should be shelved with James W Hall.

[Toesnorth's mom]

so-so, how many times can you get beaten up and shot in one book?