Old Money combines an old plot line, the search for missing cash, with new twists.  Jake Crosby is our hero, but instead of the usual private investigator or detective, Jake is a game warden charged with enforcing Mississippi’s game laws not with handling stolen cash or murderous siblings.

Jake and his partner Virgil are called in to help the local sheriff investigate who assaulted a doctor in the woods after a day hunting and left him nearly dead.  This assault happens early in the novel and we circle back to it only later.

Respected federal judge Rothbone asks Jake to keep an eye on the Bolivar twins whom he suspects of trying to get revenge on him for sentencing their father to prison.  Judge Rothbone has an ulterior motive for keeping tabs on the twins.  He knows they are searching for their father’s reputed $3MM of fraudulent money and he would like some of it to pay for his wife’s grey market kidney transplant.

Jake and Virgil enlist help to bug the Bolivar twins’ home and discover that the twins are trying to sell a helmet from the De Soto expedition back in the 1500s that they claim their dad found on federal property.  The helmet is a fake and the twins are just trying to scam the buyer but Jake and Virgil don’t realize this and are pursuing the case because it’s illegal to take artifacts from federal property.  The FBI is interested in the sale because the buyer will use his own counterfeit cash to pay for it.

Plot

We have 6 players:  The two Bolivar twins (who are not above scamming each other), their dad’s old cellmate whom they suspect knows where the cash is, the wanna be helmet buyer, the FBI, the judge and our two game wardens.

The side scams complicate the plot and make the book more interesting, especially when we readers know that Jake and Virgil are hot on the track of basically nothing and meanwhile the judge has set Jake up to spy for him and the twins plan to murder their father’s old cellmate once he tells them where the money is.

The Judge subplot felt the weakest and could have been edited out to make a tighter, faster paced book. Cole added it to give Judge Rothbone rationale to point Jake at the Bolivar twins but the original cover story – that the Judge feared retaliation – was reason enough.  The Judge’s family problems didn’t add anything to the story.

The pace is fairly slow initially and accelerates the last 20% of the book with a super fast finish that mostly ties up the loose ends.  The good guys win and the bad guys don’t.

Pacing

I remember my 10th grade English teacher telling me to show, not describe, and it’s hard.  Unfortunately author Bobby Cole describes far too much.  The novel would be better is Cole replaced the descriptions of what the characters think and feel with actions that shows us those thoughts and feelings.

For example, Jake’s wife Morgan worries about the family finances.  Cole shows Morgan with her checkbook trying to pay bills and thinking of cost cutting she can do.  Then he gives us four paragraphs describing the situation and and Morgan’s worries about Jake’s career change from stockbroker to game warden.  We could have seen the tension with a short scene between the two of them.

I wonder whether Cole would have needed much less description if he had shrunk the plot.

Characters

Jake, Virgil and the ex-cellmate are the best done characters.  We can feel Jake’s ambition to make good as a game warden, to protect the wildlife and serve the outdoors.  Cole lets us see Jake’s chagrin when he discovers that game wardens get caught up in plenty of non-wildlife situations, including helping people cope with the weather.  It’s easy to see why Jake gets excited when he thinks he’s on the track of artifacts looted from federal land.

Virgil is coasting through his career but he isn’t dead wood and he too wants to serve the countryside and people.

The ex-cellmate is interesting because he’s an authentic con man himself, recognizes the twins want to get the secrets out of him then kill him, but decides to gamble on finding the cash himself.  Cole got the balance nicely between the con artist’s risk vs. reward equations.

The Bolivar twins are left as nasty enigmas without any positive qualities and the judge feels lifeless.

Overall

I didn’t realize Old Money (A Jake Crosby Thriller Book 3) was part of a series until several pages into the book.  I don’t think it affected my enjoyment of the story since Cole gives us plenty of look backs to set up the plot and people.

While I won’t be looking for more books by Cole or more of the Jake Crosby novels, this was a decent read.  Kudos to Cole for creating an unusual setting and characters.

For myself, 3 stars.  For someone more fond of mystery and suspense, 4 stars.

I received an advanced E book through NetGalley in expectation of an honest review.