Read: "Easy Death" by Daniel Boyd

Read: Easy Death by Daniel Boyd, 2014, 9781857682579.

Another Hard Case Crime novel and better than the last couple Hard Case Crime entries I read.

December, 1951 armored car robbery in rural Ohio. Told from several points of view with some back on forth in the timeline. A fine, fine read.

Narration includes a one of the robbers, the organizer (a horrible man), a drunken helper, a down-on-his-luck helper, and a guy trying to track the crooks.

-Let the spoiling begin-

The robbery goes well with the armored car guards drawn out by a fake car crash. The crooks are dressed as cops and make their getaway as a heavy snowstorm starts flowing in. The crooks are on their way to cut through a state park when one crook is dropped off to steal a farm truck. The crooks figure the truck can make better progress through the deepening snow if they have to abandon the car. As the back-and-forth-in-time-tale is told we hear mostly hear from one crook, Eddie, and the cop, ForgotHisName. We later learn that the cop and crook are the same guy.

Eddie has trouble after trouble piled in front of him.   Eddie picked up the farm truck and is trying to catch up to the other crook, Walter.  Eddie stays in his cop uniform and ends up parked at the state park, and continuing his cop charade to get the local woman Park Ranger to use her Jeep.

Eddie and the Ranger get to a lookout tower where the gone insane Head Ranger starts shooting at them. Eddie sees Walter crashed at the bottom of a hill and has to figure a way to stop the shooter and recover the money and Walter.  He succeeds but Woman Ranger is shot and when Eddie gets to the hospital the cops spy the stolen cash which Eddie had to pile in the back of the truck.

The cops at the hospital grab the cash and the local hospital administrator raises a stink because Walter is black and the hospital does not treat "their kind".  When robbing the armored car Eddie threatened the armored car guards with retribution. At the hospital he has to do the same with another Doctor and also bluff his way as an FBI agent.

Meanwhile, minor men characters meander meaningfully and threaten to thwart the thieving.

Comments:
1. I could go back and over alliterate the rest of this. But, I think I've done enough already.
2. Crider wrote that he knows Boyd - a pen name - and Boyd will sometimes comment on Crider's blog.
3. Great use of the snow and storm.