Mickey Outside by David Lender

Mickey Outside by David Lender is a good, not great, book. The author starts the action immediately (something I am a fan of in books) with Mickey in a country club-like jail (busted for Wall Street fraud) looking for someone to help him with a to be determined scam to make money to maintain a lavish lifestyle after they are let out in a few weeks. Mickey chooses Paul and together they settle on commissioning another inmate to create a perfect copy of a Van Gogh that was stolen several years ago (the author chose to use a Van Gogh that really was stolen from a museum in 2002) and then passing off the copy as genuine and scamming a very wealthy person out of millions of dollars.

The action was pretty consistent throughout the book. No parts dragged, but nothing (including a gun chase) was super exciting either. I found myself rooting for Mickey and Paul to succeed in their scam because they were both truly likeable characters. The dialogue was definitely a strong point. The transitions through time were often confusing, however. I think this was partly because the chapters were just plain too long (only 6 for the entire book). There was a side story about a criminal’s brother roughing up and stalking Mickey’s ex-wife and then going after Mickey that I felt was completely unnecessary, didn’t belong, and was only added to increase the overall length of the book. The few times those parts came up were distracting from the main story.

Mickey Outside is an easy read, and definitely worth reading if the description interests you. It doesn’t take much concentration and reads fast. Bottom line is it’s not great, but it’s not bad either, and I definitely don’t feel like I wasted my time reading it.

3 (out of 5) Stars

Books Read in 2014: 17
Pages Read in 2014: 4167
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