#ReadThis #AGamblingMan by @DavidBaldacci @GrandCentralPub
Two years ago, we introduced you to Archer in One Good Deed:
A lot has happened in two years! What has not changed however thank goodness is the high quality of Baldacci's brilliant storytelling, and this is no sophomore effort. In fact, we think A Gambling Man is even better than Archer's first book. Calling all cool cats: have the bidding wars for the movie rights started for this book yet? It's not even available to the public yet: a few more days. We've told you many times that there's nothing like the real thing baby: Baldacci writes it all himself and does not farm out his work to lesser pens. This is key to success. Lesser books can go take a powder and scram to the bottom of the bestseller list because we think this is going to #1.
Excitement for everyone has been at a minimum obviously for the past over a year, but we guarantee you will find it here and you won't put your life on the line or get your hands dirty: "Almost getting killed makes a girl feel more alive than a dozen roses, a plate of oysters on the half shell, or soaking in a tub full of Chanel Number Five." (p. 433). Clearly, this was written for the dames and gents of our audience in mind!
Still wearing his Raymond Reddington fedora (yes it looks like there is a new Blacklist tonight and no Peachy's not in it yet), Aloysius Archer knows like Billy Gibbons (we hope to see you at lunch again in St. Augustine!) that every girl's crazy bout a sharp dressed man and starts the tale sporting "a two-piece tan wool pinstripe suit, with a patterned green single-Windsor-knotted tie, fronting a starched white shirt and topped by his crown-dented fedora with a brown band." (p. 2) Yes Manhattan and the world, in case you started dressing like a schlep in the last year, ditch that effort and put on the ritz again because this is New York and we're reading about California and the bright lights out west. The setting is much improved from the first novel. They are now somewhere.
Even better than Archer this time is Liberty Callahan, but you already knew Irish girls rule if you're on whomyouknow.com . We might call her Saoirse because freedom and liberty go hand in hand. Again, you're taken in a time machine in black ink on white paper and you're treated to snappy post-war banter: the only way to live it if you were also born too late. If you are like Peachy it will remind you of your most fabulous grandparents (look to the right to see Peachy's) and the greatest generation. Liberty is one sharp shooter and we write on that too (Bond Peachy Bond - Darren taught Peachy.)
For all car enthusiasts (of course you are and read Cruising Peachy) another star of the show here is the 1939 Delahaye. Baldacci do you have one in your collection? Hemingway said to write what you know...
And did you know that Megan Fox's Machine Gun Kelly is not the original? Baldacci has done his research and all references to this bygone era are razor sharp: you'll discover Ma Barker, Dillinger and the real Machine Gun Kelly on p. 124. It's so much fun to see all hell breaking loose when it is not personally happening to you! This book celebrates all that is great about America including CAPITALISM! It makes a great gift for all upcoming occasions. Even WHOM is used correctly on page 198.
Though this weighs in at well over 400 pages, there is nothing throwaway. Often Peachy reads all of these books in one sitting but this one is too dense for that. It is tightly written in technicolor that appears in your imagination once you start cracking on this whiplash of a tale. Baldacci has successfully created a mood of golden age nostalgia dialogue, verbiage, decor, wardrobe and complete cast of characters ready to regale you. There's even a race for Mayor which we needed in Manhattan by about yesterday and we want RAY KELLY (another great author among other professions) ; in the book it's Golden Boy versus the Tooth Fairy.
Far better than any news show you can pop on today, A Gambling Man is the cream of the crop in all entertainment right now. Or once it becomes available to you!
A Gambling Man is Highly Recommended by Whom You Know.
READ THIS.
Archer is back! David Baldacci returns to historical fiction and fan-favorite protagonist Aloysius Archer, the straight-talking World War II veteran turned private eye, with A GAMBLING MAN (out April 20, 2021), a follow-up to the Nero Award-winning thriller One Good Deed.
With the 1950s on the horizon, Archer he hops on a bus and begins his journey out west to California. Along the way, Archer stops in Reno, where a stroke of fortune delivers him a wad of cash and an eye-popping bloodred 1939 Delahaye convertible—plus a companion for the final leg of the journey, an aspiring actress named Liberty Callahan who is planning to try her luck in Hollywood. But when the two arrive in Bay Town, California, Archer quickly discovers that the hordes of people who flocked there seeking fame and fortune landed in a false paradise that instead caters to their worst addictions and fears.
Archer’s first stop is a P.I. office where he is hoping to apprentice with a legendary private eye and former FBI agent named Willie Dash. He lands the job and immediately finds himself in the thick of a potential scandal: a blackmail case involving a wealthy, well-connected politician running for mayor that soon spins into something even more sinister. As bodies begin falling, Archer and Dash must infiltrate the world of brothels, gambling dens, drug operations, and long-hidden secrets, descending into the rotten bones of a corrupt town that is selling itself as the promised land—but might actually be the road to perdition, and Archer’s final resting place.
