From the highly acclaimed new crime novelist: a story of witness
protection, petty thievery, local politics, and murder--set against the
turbulent backdrop of the 1980 presidential election
It's the fall of 1980, the last week before the presidential election
that pits the downtrodden Jimmy Carter against the suspiciously sunny
Ronald Reagan. In a seedy suburban house in Spokane, a small-time crook
formerly from New York, Vince Camden, pockets his weekly allotment of
stolen credit cards and heads off to his witness-protection job at a
donut shop. A the shop he takes a shine to a regular named Kelly, who
works for a local politician. Somehow he finds himself and the
politician in a parking lot at three in the morning, giving the slip to
a couple of menacing thugs. And then he crosses the path of a young
detective--and discovers his credit-scam partner, lying dead in his
passport-photo office with a Cheerio-size bullet-hole in his head. No
one writing crime novels today tells a story or sketches a character
with more freshness or elan than Jess Walter. Citizen Vince is his
funniest and grittiest book yet.