Lead Review

• Book: Restorations
• Location: New York State, North Carolina
• Author: Charles Strickler

Review Author: tripfiction

2.75*
1930: The novel opens as a bank robbery that doesn’t quite go according to plan in Decatur, Illinois. Max ‘Lefty’ Webber, bank robber extraordinaire, is foiled…

in 2018 in Wachau, North Carolina, Miles West is attending a house auction. The elderly Vogler sisters have passed away leaving a sizeable estate and he espies a Stutz Boattail Speedster, a rare car and bags it for $66,000. It had been hidden in a barn and thus it was quite a surprise for the auctioneers who had just found this quaint car the day before the auction, hidden under hay bales in a barn.

2018. In New York, however, mobster Carlo Bello is bidding for that very Stutz by telephone but through unfortunate circumstances he loses the bid. He has a fit of apoplexy and commands his henchmen to track down the car and its new owner. That car was to be his at any price. This would be the 6th Stutz he has purchased or stolen as he is on a quest to find THE car that belonged to Max ‘Lefty’ Webber, as he knows there is hidden treasure to be had. Not only hidden treasure but a log detailing a consignment to Russia which should list the whereabouts of a treasure chest of goodies, which is of great interest to him.

In the blink of an eye, Miles has worked out that this car must have belonged to a gangster and before Miles and his Nancy Drew sidekick, Bramley Fairchild know it, they are off on their research travels, dodging the mobsters as they head towards New York and the East Coast.

The author clearly is a fan of vehicles and food and informative family detail. These elements underpin essentially an interesting but thinly plotted storyline which has the feel of a boy’s own adventure. There are explosions, guns, stun guns, jack-knifed vehicles, car chases, kidnaps and more, and the links that progress the story are fairly simplistically revealed. It is a romp in the style of Ocean’s Eleven, that is enthusiastic in its storytelling but could do with more work on “showing” rather than “telling”.

I feel that using a ‘3’ instead of an ‘e’ in both the title and author’s name is debatable – it’s a bit naff, to be honest (even though it derives from the background coded document).

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