Friends Helping Friends

Auteur

Patrick Hoffman is a writer and private investigator based in Brooklyn. His first novel, The White Van, was a finalist for the Crime Writers’ Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and his books have been named Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed, and San Francisco Chronicle Best Books of the Year.

Texte du rabat

"An exhilarating thriller about two best friends facing white nationalists on one side and dirty cops on the other-written with Patrick Hoffman's "crisp pace and superb timing" (Wall Street Journal). Bunny Simpson grew up in a hard-scrabble family in Grand Junction. Now in his early twenties living in Denver, he's stuck at a dead-end job and behind on his rent. His best friend, Jerry LeClair, feels similarly trapped in a life of dim prospects and small-time drug dealing. Enter Helen McCalla, an attorney with an axe to grind against her ex-husband, who happens to be a judge in the local court. She offers the boys a deal: beat the guy up, and she'll pay them some money. It's simple, just friends helping friends, right? Part crime novel, part portrait of working-class middle America, celebrated novelist Patrick Hoffman takes us on a tour of Denver's underbelly: its courts, jails, criminals, and dirty cops. Bunny never wanted any trouble. So how the hell did he end up at a white supremacist compound in rural Colorado? Tragic, scary, and at times hilarious, Friends Helping Friends is a study of the way generational trauma endures, an exploration of the vulnerability of our destinies-and an epic tale of how friendship can survive it all"--

Résumé

An exhilarating thriller about a white nationalist group –and the man taking them down from the inside – written with critically acclaimed author Patrick Hoffman’s “crisp pace and superb timing” (Wall Street Journal) 

 Bunny Simpson is at his usual post behind the counter at a Denver cigarette store when his volatile friend Jerry presents an opportunity: 500 dollars to beat a guy up. Jerry has been dealing steroids to Helen, a lawyer, who is getting rapidly stronger just as she gets more erratic, vengeful towards her cheating ex-husband who she asks Jerry to attack. Bunny’s relatively solid conscience isn’t enough to stop him from biting -- Ray, his beloved quasi-uncle, is behind on rent for the apartment they share, and Bunny will do anything to bail him out. And it’s a small favor; just friends helping friends. Right? 

 Not quite. When Bunny and Jerry arrested, Bunny finds himself faced with a choice: Go to jail for years, or take a plea deal to go undercover in a white nationalist group under federal investigation. Bunny obliges, and soon he finds himself witness to a new world of startling violence, toxic masculinity, and warped conceptions of discipline, religion, and patriotism. If these men discover that he’s a snitch, they’ll kill him without blinking. His life is at stake, but so is his freedom. Soon Bunny is embroiled in a criminal enterprise far darker than he could’ve imagined -- a wasp’s nest with eyes on him from all sides -- and he needs to penetrate it at its center. 

 Patrick Hoffman, critically acclaimed author of Every Man a Menace and Clean Hands, is at his brilliant best in these pages. A wholly unique portrait of friendship, extremism, and the dual power of technology and money, Friends Helping Friends is an electrifying thriller from a veritable talent.