In ‘The Last Act,’ by Brad Parks, an unsuspecting young actor gets in over his head
By Patrick Anderson Patrick Anderson Bio March 12 at 4:00 PM Brad Parks started his career as a reporter for this newspaper and later worked for the Newark Star-Ledger. He has now written nine novels and won the Shamus, Nero and Lefty crime-fiction awards. His thriller “Say Nothing,” published in 2017, was delightfully suspenseful, but his latest, “The Last Act,” may be his best yet.
What to do? Unexpectedly, a friend from high school, Danny Ruiz, now an FBI agent, makes a strange but tempting offer. He explains that a banker named Mitchell Dupree is in prison for laundering millions of dollars for a Mexican drug cartel. Dupree has documents that could bring down the cartel but refuses to surrender them to the FBI.
They call it Club Fed. No one works very hard — maybe a few hours each day in the kitchen or laundry; otherwise inmates read, watch TV, play poker and enjoy the marijuana that’s readily available, thanks to guards happy to make a buck.Author Brad Parks Tommy talks his way into the nightly poker game with the banker he’s supposed to befriend, but their budding friendship inspires no disclosures. He frequently calls Danny at the FBI to report his progress — or lack thereof.
Meanwhile, Amanda is living with Tommy’s domineering mother in New Jersey. Amanda hails from a tiny town in Mississippi that’s notable only for being near Elvis Presley’s hometown of Tupelo. She’s a talented artist, but when she takes her paintings to the head of New York’s finest art gallery, he demands sex for showing her work. She of course refuses and flees but wishes Tommy were there to support and console her.When she visits Tommy, we’re given this glimpse of prison life: “I embraced her.
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