The Downside

by Mike Cooper

In an age of cyber-crime, Finn is an old school he's never stolen anything weighing less than five tons. Now, fresh out of prison and flat broke, he's got a line on his biggest job ever. Cracking the most heavily guarded private vault in North America? No problem. Hauling $50 million of precious metal out past guards, dozens of policemen and an armored SWAT battalion? Even easier. But navigating the betrayals of double-crossing partners, the machinations of a hedge-fund billionaire gone bad, and the ambiguous proposals of a woman with her own agenda? Finn has only begun to figure out the downside.

Genres: Crime

304 pages, Hardcover

First published September 5, 2017

About the author

In first grade I wanted to be an astronaut.

In eighth, a police officer. For college applications I said scientist. After graduation, though, it was off to Asia for several years. I did hold down some real jobs, mostly in finance -- for Boston's transit authority, for Japanese companies, eventually for Fidelity Investments.

In between, travel. I've hitchhiked through northeast Asia, taken a freighter to Bora Bora, overlanded to Tibet, backpacked across Tasmania, and climbed Mt. Kinabalu on Borneo. I learned a little Indonesian, a little Mandarin and more than a little Japanese, then pretty much forgot it all. I've eaten bugs and raw horsemeat and too much dubious, brazier-grilled goat. I only got really sick twice.

In my thirties all that ended. I bought my first car, finally met my wife, and went to MBA school. For a while I wore a lot of business casual.

Then our daughter was born, and I've been at home ever since. She has a brother too, and now they're both teenagers. My wife still works, which is great because we need to eat and pay taxes and all that. We live outside Boston and go camping every summer.

Oh, and I've published some novels.

Reviews

[Viva · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars = I liked it as per GoodRead's rating system.

This short heist book reads like a movie script. It's short on detail but to the point on action and a fast read.

Short summary: Finn is out of prison after a 7 year stint. He is immediately offered a vault heist of valuable metals. He gathers up his old crew to plan a tunnel job. Meanwhile, activists gather for an environmental protest at the same time and around the same place that the heist is taking place. What will happen? Will Finn succeed or will the activists and police derail his caper?

A lot happens in 286 pages. The characters have to be introduced, the heist planned, scouted and made. The "other side" in the form of special railway agents is also shown, but it's somewhat a halfhearted effort that was better off not included, with the word count better off given to the heist instead. So while each event or character is given an adequate treatment, none was really fully developed enough for me to feel it. If it was a movie, I would have enjoyed it but forgotten all about it once I walked outside into the bright sunshine. As a book, I enjoyed it, now I'm writing a quick review and on to the next one.

I got this book free as an uncorrected proof.

[Shai Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! I just finished THE DOWNSIDE and fell in love with Finn who is definitely an old school criminal. No computers for him. In fact, he reminds me of guys that you will meet in your local neighborhood bar after their shift except for the fact that he tends to get paid a lot more when things go right. And it's his turn for things to go right.



I do have to say that Mr. Cooper does a brilliant job with his characters. Some of them you will click with, others not so much. Just like the folks that you meet in real life. Along with Finn, I really liked the characters of the hacker Nicola and Corman who is a jack of a lot of trades.


The reader is given the inside view to a caper that definitely involves some heavy lifting. We get to see as all the details fall into place as the big night comes closer and closer. We even get to join the gang as the heist takes place. A lot of twists and turns as the tension ratchets up.


I would recommend THE DOWNSIDE to any of my readers who enjoy a good thriller or crime drama. Personally I am hoping to see some more books with Finn and his crew.


*** I received this book at no charge from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions expressed within are my own.

[John McKenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Downside
Mysterious Book Report No. 316
by John Dwaine McKenna

The MBR is kicking off the New Year 2018 with one of the best caper novels to come our way since The Sting was made into a movie back in 1973. It features one of the most unique bad guys in current crime fiction. His name is Finn and he’s a professional thief who calls himself the last of the hard hats, that’s because he only steals big things . . . like a tractor-trailer load of new luxury automobiles, or heavy machinery . . . even a couple of railcars full of exotic ores for processing high strength steel. Finn’s a guy who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, knows how to operate anything with a motor and has a hand-picked crew of men with calloused hands, dirty fingernails and larceny in their hearts. We meet them all in The Downside, (Mysterious Press/Open Road, PB $14.99, 286 pages, ISBN 978-1-5040-4461-5) by Mike Cooper. Finn is fresh out of prison and flat broke. He’s contacted by a beautiful woman named Emily who’s the executive assistant to a shady Wall Street billionaire who wants to finance Finn’s next job. It’s easy . . . all he has to do is break into a high security commodities warehouse and make off with fifty million dollars worth of the precious metal Rhodium. Big and heavy, it’s right up Finn’s alley. He reassembles the very same crew from his last job, the one that put him in prison for seven years, and prepares to tunnel into an unbreachable vault. His only problem? Somewhere in his crew of construction workers is a turncoat . . . the rat who put him in prison. Determined, focused, and wary of everyone, Finn lays out a plan and starts buying heavy equipment to do the job. This novel moves at breakneck speed and never slows down, with a blue collar anti-hero you’ll be rooting for, long before the novel comes to it’s dynamic conclusion. The MBR is fascinated by Finn, and looking for more of him from the award winning pen of Mike Cooper, which is the pen name of author Mike Weicek.

[Pamela Small · Rating 2 out of 5]

THE DOWNSIDE by Mike Cooper is advertised as being a "fast moving thriller....hurtling along at breakneck speed". This reader did not experience the thrill AT ALL. It my opinion, I felt it the pace is laborious, slowed down by technical jargon ( tunnel boring machines, excavator dimensions and weight, tapping into high voltage power lines, etc). All the technical details muddle the action of the storyline. The transitions from one chapter are choppy, jumping from one scenario to another, which disrupts the flow of the plot and is confusing. The characters are flat and one dimensional; I did not relate to or embrace them, and did not care about them or their fate. Therefore, the characters nor the action push the plot along, and instead of building to dazzling excitement, I was dazed with frustration and confusion. Another major flaw in the ( lack of) character development is the fact there is no MOTIVE behind their actions to commit another heist, funded by the same person who betrayed them before, which caused their arrest and imprisonment. I mean, how stupid is that? These are intelligent people, supposedly, yet they jump back in the fray after just being released from prison? No mention was made of parole checks? All the red flags are presented as a warning they are being duped and betrayed again...Whaaat? As has been quoted by Jodi Picoult, " When you have been burned by fire once, you don't jump into the flames again." Exactly. But these people do just that, defying logic and common sense, which makes this caper silly, implausible, and a waste of time.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good pacy read (listen, actually, did the audiobook version from Avid, good narrator, Jeff Harding) BUT... I can't get past the fact that the Author doesn't really understand Keynesian economics (basic supply and demand and impact on prices and commodity trading). If you set that aside, enjoyable caper.

It almost feels like it was written to be optioned as a screenplay - (think The Italian Job) with the complex planning and physicality of the heist. Good gritty settings, some suitably dodgy characters, all good... except for the fact that the writer probably studied literature and not finance.

So here are the spoilers... just Supply and Demand and commodity price movements, not plot.

A key part of the plot of the book is that a supply of a precious metal is found to be fake, or will be found to be fake. But who will make money how when this happens is inversely calculated. Commodity values are based on known supplies as well as the marginal costs of producing more supply. So if a large portion of what is in known stock is found to be fake, the actual supply is lower than previously thought, and the spot and future price rises. Just look a the wikipedia page if you don't recall Econ 101. Throughout the book there is a premise that the price would fall if supply is reduced (revealed to be fake, or overstated). Anyway, other than shouting "wrong!" in my head when I read (heard) these passages, I was otherwise amused and entertained.

[Michelle Kidwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Downside

by Mike Cooper

Open Road Integrated Media

MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Mystery & Thrillers

Pub Date 05 Sep 2017

I am reviewing a copy of The Downside through Open Road Integrated Media and Netgalley:

Finn is the last hard hat in the age of cybercrime. He is a professional thief who only steals big things, autoraks, factory lines and other machinery.

Finn is just out of prison when he has a line on his biggest job yet. He is flat broke so the timing is right. A beautiful woman with an agenda of her own puts him in touch with a crooked Wall Street Billionaire. He wants him to break into a vault and haul out fifty million dollars worth of the precious metal Rhodium. It's big and heavy and right up Finn's alley?

Will he be able to pull this job off, or will he get caught trying to break into the high-security underground vault in New Jersey?

Find out in The Downside.

Five out of five stars.

Happy Reading.

[C Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do you do when you get out of jail? You plan to break in and rob the most secure vault in the world. Finn has just done 7 years for a similar crime. Finn did the most jail time of the group that worked the last heist and really wants to know who turned them in. One of them did. He's approached by one of the group involved in the last heist - to see if he wants to plan and manage the goes after this vault job. There's a multimillion dollar payoff if they succeed. But Finn's real motivator is revenge-gather the same crew together for this job and figure out who dropped the dime on them last time. This book took a few pages to get into but then you're hooked and have to keep reading to see if they suceed and Finn gets his revenge. Some technical construction jargon may put some readers off. With much thanks to Mysterious Press for the ARC.

[Linda Steighner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mike Cooper's "The Downside" is a short heist/caper book that is an easy fast read. The main character Finn just gets out of prison (after 7 years) and is offered a job. Rather than having learned from his past mistakes, he gathers his old crew together and prepares for the vault heist. However an environmental protest may impede the success of the caper. The story was short so there was not much time to fully develop the characters. Sometimes the story got bogged down in the planning rather than the action. It showed potential but while I liked it, I was not upset when halfway thru I accidently left the book at an aunt's house and did not get a chance to get back to finish it for several months. I was glad to complete the book, but not driven crazy by not being able to finish it right away, like I would have been with some other books.

[Jay Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

If this was a movie it would be "Oceans something." It includes a variety of colorful and interesting characters attempting an impossible heist. The well-written story has twists, surprises, and betrayals as the plot unfolds. Despite the difficulty involved and the final betrayal, the ending is satisfying. Finn is a brilliant, old-fashioned criminal dealing with the different world he finds when his prison sentence is completed. The suspense deals with his growth, the attempt to find his betrayer, how to conduct a major crime without being caught, and how to deal with his growing interest in the woman who is his contact. There is more than enough to keep the reader occupied and interested. Definitely a great book.

[Rosann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this fast-paced suspenseful heist adventure. The characters were fun, interesting, and surprising. Author Mike Cooper grips then carries you along for the ride without weighing you down with too much jargon, too much character analysis, too much extraneous detail. I found just the right amount of action and information about the characters/situations to keep me reading to the exclusion of the other books I am already reading. From the get go, The Downside was refreshing, compelling, and a thoroughly enjoyable read.

[Jannelies (living between hope and fear) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you Netgalley for this book.

The Downside happens to be almost exactly the kind of book I like to read. It is unconventional, with a very reluctant ‘hero’, full of action and reads almost like a movie script. Almost, I said, because there are some flaws. Sometimes the technical details are baffling and why in heaven’s name is Finn making the same mistake twice? All in all, I liked reading it but I hoped for just a little more.

[Don Gorman · Rating 2 out of 5]

(1 1/2). Here's the scoop: a good start, a fun finish and a pretty darn muddy middle. Finn is a pretty good protagonist but the two ladies in the plot, Emily and especially Nicola, are the characters that make this one go round. Not worth a great deal of brain power but modest fun.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m rounding it up to 2 stars because it was short and snappy enough that I didn’t spend much time on it. I will say, however, it is very obvious Mike Cooper watches a lot of action films and fancies himself as a script writer…

[Melanie Hollin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Action packed throughout and intelligently written, this novel is a break from the norm and a rollercoaster ride of emotion throughout.
You will need to concentrate to get the best out of it but I also learned a lot.
Recommended.

[Richard Uhlhorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read! I love books that are complex, accurate and mysterious, and that end with a great twist. I'll read more Cooper in the future.

[Rick Mitchell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring. Like reading a recipe - 95% of the book was preparation with no characters developed

[Kamlesh Gandhi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very poor narration gave up listening as it seemed to meander

[Ann Theis]

PW