Criminal Karma
Thomas, Steven M.
Hardcover
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BOOK SYNOPSIS
With Criminal Paradise, his gritty, satirical take on the criminal underworld and the society it preys on, Steven M. Thomas earned comparison to such masters as Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen. Now Thomas has devised a new adventure for his charismatic hero, the small-time crook Robert Rivers, who has dreams of making the big score and the brains to pull it off if only his partner, Reggie, wouldn't keep getting in the way.
Indeed, Rivers is back and the stakes are high: Hes on the trail of a diamond necklace worth a small fortune. The necklace belongs to beautiful Southern California socialite Evelyn Evermore, but Rivers has a foolproof plan to remedy that. Unfortunately, the plan is not Reggie-proof, and when the dust clears, the necklace is gone and the cops are in hot pursuit.
But when Rivers learns that Evelyn is mixed up with a Venice Beach spiritual guru known as Baba Raba, the necklace seems to be within reach once more. Only the deeper Rivers digs, the more it appears that Baba Raba is a dangerous fraud intent on the same prize Rivers is pursuing. Worse, Rivers finds himself developing a soft spot for Evelyn, who isn't the shallow socialite she seems to be.
Soon Rivers and Reggie are barreling headlong into the not-so-harmonious heart of a Southern California crime cabalan adventure full of safecracking, gunslinging, seduction, treachery, family drama, and even a touch of romance.
With Criminal Karma, Steven M. Thomas has written a smart and sexy crime thriller that more than meets the promise of his acclaimed debut.
BOOK EXCERPTS
Chapter One
She was three cars ahead of us on Highway 60, headed east toward Palm Springs in a white Town Car driven by a guy who looked like trouble. We were in my new Seville STS, Reggie behind the wheel, slouched down in the leather seat, steering with one thick finger. I was almost but not quite sure she had the jewels with her, packed in one of the red Samsonite suitcases I’d seen her escort load into the Lincoln’s cavernous trunk. People think gangsters drive Lincolns to show off their money, and they do, but they also like them because there’s room for multiple bodies in the trunk. Not that the lady was a gangster. That was us. Kind of.
We’d tailed her from the canal- side house in Venice, through downtown and East L.A. Ahead of us to the right, the Puente Hills bulked up in the golden light you get on winter afternoons after the Santa Ana winds have whisked the smog out to sea. With black- and- white dairy cattle grazing on the green slopes, the hills reminded me of an oil painting I’d seen while casing a Santa Barbara museum a couple of weeks before—a plein air vision of SoCal’s vanishing rural past worth $30,000, more than the rolling expanse of portrayed acreage was worth when the painter committed it to canvas in the 1920s.
“What’s the plan?” Reggie said.
I’d explained everything to him the night before. Either he hadn’t paid attention or he was just annoying me now because he was bored. “We’ll play it by ear,” I said, annoying him back.
He turned his shaggy head and gave me a look, half exasperated, half disgusted, that I remembered from years before in St. Louis when he had been the tough mentor showing me, a teenage novice, the ins and outs of our suburban underworld.
Traffic was thinning as we left the city behind, the red needle of the Seville’s speedometer edging up to 80 mph as Reggie kept close but not too close to the Lincoln. I didn’t know much about the lady other than what I’d read in the society pages of a slick coastal magazine where I first saw the pink diamond necklace reproduced on glossy paper, but I appreciated her judgment in leaving for the desert early in the afternoon.
On Friday evenings, the Los Angeles basin is like an ants’ nest that has been stirred with a stick. Whether you are heading north along the coast to Santa Barbara, south to San Diego, or inland to the mountain resorts or desert, every outlet is clogged with cars, fumes, and frustration as swarms of the basin’s ten million inhabitants rush for the exits of paradise.
One of the things about conventional people that annoys me the most is their tendency to do everything at the allotted time. If it is noon, they go to lunch—at exactly the worst moment, when restaurants are most crowded and the wait for tables and food is the longest. If it is Friday and by some unaccountable oversight they have one credit card left that’s not maxed out, then it is time for them to go away for the weekend; they cheerfully edge onto gridlocked highways after work, stubbornly oblivious to the stupidity of their timing. If we had left Venice at 5 p.m. instead of 2 p.m., we would have been part of a hundred- mile- long traffic jam, arriving in Palm Springs with red faces and sparking nerves after a miserable four hour commute.
Instead, it was clear sailing as we crossed the 57, the 15, and the 215, and entered the Badlands that lurk like a fairy- tale barrier between Los Angeles and the handy Shangri- La of the Coachella Valley. I gave the lady credit for a sense of tradition, too. Instead of hurtling east on I- 10, the soulless highway the monads take, she was following the route old Hollywood rolled along when stars first discovered the charms of Palm Springs in the 1920s and ’30s. Dressed in flannel and furs, they left L.A.’s gray rainy season behind in favor of warm winter sunshine in what was then a sparsely populated wilderness with old Indians trudging down dusty roads between scattered resorts that welcomed the rich and famous..
AUTHOR BIO
Steven M. Thomas is the award-winning author of Criminal Paradise and many short stories, essays, and poems that have been published in more than fifty literary and small-press magazines in the United States and England. Until recently, he served as editor of OC Metro, a high-circulation magazine based in Orange County, California, where he lives.
BOOK REVIEWS
This novel is more than a wonderful thriller and a classic caper-gone-wrong.
Its a morality tale and a jaw-dropping tour of Southern California at its most crazy and compelling. I loved it.T. Jefferson Parker, author of The Renegades and L.A. Outlaws
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USER BOOK REVIEWS
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Great Second Novel
Steven M. Thomas has followed up his killer first novel, “Criminal Paradise,” with another colorful, exciting and well written crime fiction saga set in Southern California --thi... 
Great Second Novel
Steven M. Thomas has followed up his killer first novel, "Criminal Paradise," with another colorful, exciting and well written crime fiction saga set in Southern California --this time in Venice Beach and the Coachella Valley. Robert Rivers, Thomas' burglar/stickup man hero, and his ex-biker sidekick Reggie England are after a fabulous diamond necklace. When they follow socialite Evelyn Evermore out to the desert to steal it, everything that can go wrong does go wrong and they end up on the run. But Rivers doesn't give up easily and he soon regroups and goes after the diamonds again in Venice Beach where Evelyn lives and is a disciple of a 300 pound guru named Baba Raba who parades around town in nothing but a loincloth, luring in new followers to his Center for Enlightened Beings. Rivers soon discovers that Baba is after the same prize piece of jewelry he is, and the game is on with gunfights, safecracking and tense encounters with the cops. As in the first novel, Thomas does a super job of capturing the atmosphere and ambiance of the SoCal coast, and even works in some romance between Rivers and tough young lady he meets at Baba's ashram. There is also a totally winning character named Ozone Pacific -- a homeless kid who turns out to be the key to the whole mystery that surrounds Evelyn, Baba, and the matched, rose-colored diamond necklace. Because of the quality of the writing and the depth of character development, I recommend this book to readers of literary novels as well as mystery and crime fiction fans.
--Paul J. Rate This Review:
It is January 1996 and Robert “Rob” Rivers and his partner Reggie England are following a rich lady out to Palm Springs at the height of the winter season to steal a diamond necklace from her. Within a few fast-...
It is January 1996 and Robert “Rob” Rivers and his partner Reggie England are following a rich lady out to Palm Springs at the height of the winter season to steal a diamond necklace from her. Within a few fast-paced chapters, Rivers has run up against a homicidal moron named Jimmy Z who manages to throw a wrench in the gears of his careful plan. Rivers and England get away from the scene of the messed up robbery in the desert but find more trouble waiting back in Venice Beach where they and the rich lady, Evelyn Evermore, live. It turns out that Evermore is mixed up with a corrupt New Age guru who is trying to pressure her into giving him the same necklace that Rivers is after. The guru, whose name is Baba Raba, is mixed up in turn with some Italian gangsters in a high stakes real estate scam and needs the necklace to fulfill an obligation to them. Meanwhile, The rich lady doesn’t care all that much about the necklace. She is more concerned about her missing daughter and grandson, who the guru has promised to help locate in exchange for the necklace.
Thomas weaves a fascinating story as the gangsters, the guru and the robbers all go after the same prize and Rob ends up helping Evermore locate her lost grandson. Along with colorful realism and hair raising action scenes, the story has a lot of humor and a great sense of place. Thomas captures the strange world of Venice Beach in the 1990s better than anyone else I have ever read. This is an entertaining, enjoyable novel with a lot more depth than most thrillers. The characters really come alive and you care about what happens to them. An all round great read.
--Donald P. Rate This Review:
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MORE BOOK INFO
ISBN: 034549783X
ISBN(13-digit): 9780345497833
Dewey Decimal: FIC
Library of Congress: 2009020354
Book Publisher: Random House Inc
Language: ENG
No. of Pages: 257
Paper Weight (lb): 1.0375 lb
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