Mine All Mine

by Adam Davies

Overview

A dazzling and funny romantic comedy from Adam Davies, the author of The Frog King and Goodbye Lemon.

Otto Starks is a "pulse"—a highly specialized security guard who has hyperdeveloped senses and a nervous habit of popping tabs of cyanide. Otto was once a rising star but then he was rolled three times by the notorious Rat Burglar. Now, demoted and dangerously in debt to a loan shark, all he has left is Charlie Izzo, the woman he loves. Unfortunately, she is also the Rat Burglar's zealous advocate. That's bad enough. But then Otto gets robbed yet again and the cops pronounce him the prime suspect. When Charlie disappears and Otto becomes a fugitive, he realizes that the Rat Burglar has stolen much more from him than art. And to get it back he must break the law he has devoted his life to upholding. Mine All Mine is a nail-biting thriller about deception, betrayal, and ownership—in art and in love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594483141
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/05/2008
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Adam Davies is also the author of Goodbye Lemon and The Frog King. He lives in Savannah, Georgia, where is a professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"If Raymond Chandler had a deranged sense of humor, if Nick Hornby dabbled in thrillers, if Philip K. Dick were not dead—they might have collaborated on a book as strange and strangely wonderful as Mine All Mine. A rollicking, rocking good read."—David Benioff, author of The 25th Hour and City of Thieves

"Biting and bitter, but also charming. A svelte page-turner...laugh-out-loud funny."—Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

"If Raymond Chandler had a deranged sense of humor, if Nick Hornby dabbled in thrillers, if Philip K. Dick were not dead—they might have collaborated on a book as strange and strangely wonderful as Mine All Mine. A rollicking, rocking good read."—David Benioff, author of The 25th Hour and City of Thieves

"Biting and bitter, but also charming. A svelte page-turner...laugh-out-loud funny."—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

The third novel from Davies (Goodbye Lemon; The Frog King) is a hilarious caper narrated by down-on-his-luck good guy Otto Starks. Having worked his entire life to become a top-notch "pulse" (highly specialized security guard), Otto falls from grace when several of the works of art under his watch are stolen by the Rat Burglar. Otto, who pops toxic pills in an effort to build immunity to paralyzing and lethal substances, starts to look like an accomplice when he repeatedly fails to apprehend the thief. Also grinding at Otto is his torment at keeping his job a secret from Charlie Izzo, the woman he loves but is too afraid to propose to. Charlie is as smart as she is beautiful, but to Otto's dismay, she praises the Rat Burglar, whose m.o. is to steal back plundered masterpieces and return them to their original owners. After the Rat Burglar steals a secret map to a massive plundered treasure, Otto's compartmentalized worlds collide. Otto's narration is biting and bitter, but also charming. Parts are laugh-out-loud funny, and there's enough suspense to keep readers riveted throughout this svelte page-turner. (Aug.)

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Publishers Weekly

A high-strung sentry meets his match in this witty comedy about love, possession and the uncertainty of security. Barring the overly elaborate but forgivable confluence of double-crosses at its gasping finale, Davies's latest comic novel (Goodbye Lemon, 2006, etc.) succeeds admirably. Our loquacious narrator is Otto Starks, a highly specialized security agent known as a "pulse"-a human sentinel with otherworldly powers of perception honed by years of training and a plethora of pharmacological abuse incurred in the interests of toxin immunity. "To say that we are elite security guards doesn't quite cover it," Otto explains. "We are the reason why the Crown Jewels still belong to Great Britain and why warheads haven't shown up in Iran." Blessed with the love of struggling art-history professor Charlie Izzo, who thinks he's a talent scout for the Mets, Starks is circling around a few more high-paying gigs before he plans to slip away with Charlie in tow on an expensive sloop. Putting a monkey wrench in his plans is a preternaturally gifted art thief dubbed the "Rat Burglar," who revels not only in outmaneuvering the hypersensitive guard, but in leaving him alive each time to suffer the ridicule of his equally quirky comrades. Davies brilliantly imagines the elaborate details of guarding treasures that Otto thinks of merely as "MacGuffins," from the bantering shorthand of his fraternity of muscle-bound custodians to the action-packed brawls between Starks and opponents armed with dart guns. As the plot intensifies toward a showdown among Otto, his elusive nemesis and a vicious underworld puppeteer named Azar over a stolen cache of misappropriated Iraqi art, Davies's latest starts to resemblea comic book more than a crime novel. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Frenetic and clever: does for lonesome security guards what John Welter's Night of the Avenging Blowfish (1994) did for the U.S. Secret Service.

Kirkus Reviews