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EDDIE’S WORLD by Charlie Stella Kirkus Star

EDDIE’S WORLD

by Charlie Stella

Pub Date: Dec. 1st, 2001
ISBN: 0-7867-0893-X

Eddie Senta’s world is out of whack and, as he’ll be the first to tell you, he’s got no one to blame but himself. It’s all a matter of choices, see, and some of his recent ones have been about as sensible as picking a minefield for a Sunday stroll. But he’s bored. He’s been bickering with his much younger wife, second-guessing his performance as a father, shadowboxing with the problems he used to bang away at. Though he’s good at his day job, word-processing, it’s become his idea of blah, and since his night job, cat burglary, has grown almost as routine, Eddie, at 40-something, finds himself in the throes of midlife crisis. But that’s no excuse for unmitigated dumbness, which is what you’d have to call the decision to go for a quick score when he needs neither the money nor the inevitable aggravation an inner voice instantly predicts. And does that voice ever have it nailed. Before Eddie can say second-story, he’s the leading suspect in a triple murder. The cops are after him, his wife is leaving him, his boyhood friend (and current accomplice) is dead. Eddie’s one last chance to set his madly tilting world to rights is to identify and catch up to the real killer—even though the perp is both connected and protected in ways you wouldn’t believe.

Fresh, fast, and darkly funny. A sure-footed debut from a writer with a spare, no-nonsense prose style who can make you like characters you think you shouldn’t.