The Stakes, Ben Sanders

THE STAKES is the latest noir thriller from NZ writer Ben Sanders, and it's a standout. Set once again in the US, this time NYPD detective Miles Keller is onto what he thinks is a pretty good idea; ripping off rich New York criminals, with a view to early, anonymous retirement. I mean really, what could go wrong? Other than the NYPD investigation into his suspected shooting of a hitman and the reappearance in his life of fellow scammer Nina Stone? Or is it the tricky complication of the go-to-thug, Bobby Dean, brother of the aforementioned dead hitman, dispatched by Stone's estranged, gangster husband to find her? What with him being somebody with a big grudge against Keller for obvious reasons. Or is it the likelihood that his latest rip off, which netted him quite a tidy sum, but left a few bodies and some tricky consequences, is in danger of exploding all over him?

You'll find all these twists and turns laid out in an easy to follow manner here with just enough info to keep you up to date, and never enough to get in the road of the break neck pace that everything in THE STAKES operates under. Needless to say, "it's complicated" is the status update made to measure for this scenario. Delivered at lightening fast pace, it's also almost funny in places, and Miles Keller is one of those wonderfully wrong sorts of characters that you can't help but hope gets away with it all. What happens to Nina, what happens to Keller, and what happens to Nina's estranged husband are all part of the equation, as is the lurking Dean, and the chances that the last rip off that Keller perpetrated might come back to bite him in a big way.

Loved THE STAKES, it's got plenty of substance to back up the style that's always been there, with a strong plot, and some realistic, conflicted characters, all of which combine to explore a surprisingly interesting question - what happens when a supposedly good guy takes on the bad guys at their own game?