FAST FRIENDS

A pair of college friends and a pet pig foil a crooked cop and a terrorist plot in this high-wire change of pace from Dunlap (Karma and Other Stories, 2002, etc.).

Liza Silvestri has a deal with her venture-capitalist husband Jay: Neither looks too closely into the other one’s business. Jay’s studied indifference has helped Liza hide her juvie rap sheet, but her ignorance suddenly becomes a problem when Jay is murdered before her ears and the killers go after information they wrongly assume she’s got. What capital venture is attracting so much interest from Inspector Frank Bentec, a bent cop who knows all about Liza’s past as the Jewelry Store Lolita? How did Jay manage to get her old friend Ellen Baines’s boring fiancé, Kansas City railroad router Harry Cooper, involved? And what’s at stake in his unfinished business that’s worth $6 million? With Jay gone, Liza begs help of Ellen, who arrives to find herself up to her neck in figurative sharks and the literal pet pig Liza’s insisted on taking with her. Their agenda: get out of town, then out of California, then out to where they’ll be able to rescue Jay’s last shipment from the dozens of bad guys who want it while staying clear of the hundreds of law enforcers who want them.

The resulting no-holds-barred chase is a tour de force you will have forgotten by next week. But you won’t leave it unfinished either.