Dirty Work (2003)

Now I have to read the whole Stone Barrington series. ( )

This was in a box of books a local friend gave to me to read and then pass on to others. I've not read any other novels in this series--so it was a bit confusing since I would assume readers of the series know what Elaine's is while I did not.

The title "Dirty Work" in part refers to the fact that Stone Barrington does work for another law firm when they don't want to do it or don't want to get their hands dirty doing it. Dirty could also refer to all the killing that goes on in this novel (both from the supposed good guys and the supposed bad guys).

WARNING: SPOILERS MAY LIE AHEAD. READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION

****
Stone is contracted to get photos of a married man cheating with his masseuse. Stone hires the nephew of a friend who bungles the job, but in the process, he manages to take the only known photo of an international assassin.

This assassin is after a team of Brits who killed her parents when she was a child. Stone's acquaintance Carpenter was one of that team.

What I liked:
-the pacing was decent
-Stone seems like a somewhat ethical guy
-Stone tried to broker a deal

What I didn't like:
-Stone and Carpenter/Felicity sleep together but by the end, they don't even seem to be talking to each other.
-The assassin hooks up with several men and women to further her cause of changing identities and/or killing the people she wants to kill.
-The killing continues because the lady responsible for getting the wire transfers has to have a quickie and loses the paper with the order behind the fax machine where it is not discovered until after the deadline.
-With the assassin being as smart as she is, I have a hard time believing that she wouldn't know that a same day wire transfer needed to be set up prior to 2 PM. That whole part of the plot felt like an author's contrivance to me to get the plot from where it was to where he needed it to go. ( )

One can read the plot from the description. Fast paced with interesting characters -- unbelievable in that the NYPD let a terrorist wander around NYC without some chaperone. The book sets the stage for Stone's relationship with Carpenter. in subsequent stories.. Stone manages to bed nearly every female in thees books; I was disappointed that Marie Therise Dubois didn't end up there. Maybe Stone has some scruples, after all. Page turner if you don't worry too much about truth and just enjoy it. ( )

Hired to prove infidelity in an heiress's marriage, Stone Barrington goes undercover. But the work turns dirty - and catastrophic - when the errant husband is found dead and the other woman disappears without a trace. Now Stone must clear his own good name ad find a killer hiding among the glitterati of New York's high society. Enter Carpenter - the beautiful British intelligence agent first encountered in The Short Forever - who has arrived in New York to begin an investigation of her own. Stone suspects that her case is strangely connected to the dead husband. And he and Dino, his former NYPD partner, are set to face the most bizarre and challenging assignment of their very colorful careers. ( )

Look, you can write a story that is over the top but, to do so, you need to let the reader know you are grinning at yourself. Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt comes to mind.

You can’t write something that pretends to be a serious thriller but center it around an assassin so cold-blooded that they will casually kill a bystander to get a driver’s license but then leave someone alive who could positively identify them. You don't have them give out their real names and digits to cute bartenders while on the run from both the police and major intelligence services. You particularly can’t have it when you introduced the assassin as so secretive that she spent a lifetime making sure that even a photograph didn't exist.

You can’t have the hero defy the law and take the moral high ground to protect someone and then have him display an almost sociopathic lack of moral qualms about what that person is doing. You also have to think twice about allowing that hero to have contacts with more skills applicable to black ops than would a member of the CIA or NSA.

You can’t have elite operatives of intelligence agencies casually blabbing with a lawyer about ongoing, critical operations—even if that lawyer was a former NYPD detective—just because they want to get laid.

The prose is fine. The action is good. The characters are completely unreal. ( )