Ringer by Brian M. Wiprud
Minotaur, $26.99, 342 pages, ISBN 978-0-312-60189-8
In a small attempt to start things back toward normalcy, maybe even give a few of you a smile for a moment or two, the MBR for this week is a book titled Ringer. In it, protagonist Morty Martinez, a “gentleman of means and leisure” living in La Paz, Mexico, is given a quest to recover an ancient golden ring containing a sliver of the true cross that’s been stolen from a holy relic belonging to the parish church: the mummified finger of a conquistador named Hermando Martinez de Salvaterra. The ring has turned up in a photograph, in a national magazine, on the hand of a tycoon named Robert Tyson Grant in New York City. The plot gets complicated when Morty, an Inspector Clouseau type, is mistaken for a Mexican assassin hired by Grant in order to do away with his troublesome step-daughter. Throw in a scheming girlfriend, a hit man obsessed with death, a calculating newspaper reporter, AND a thieving fortune teller . . . and this one gets zanier with every chapter. And oh, I almost forgot, the point-of-view is Morty’s, written as a screenplay by him while he’s awaiting his execution the next day by firing squad. The last few chapters will have you on the edge of your seat . . . but the conclusion will leave you laughing. I swear.
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