Big Numbers by Jack Getze
It’s a good, funny story filled with suspense and adventure. ~Socrates Book Reviews
…quite a bit of action, drama and intrigue to balance out all the hilarious trouble Austin seems to bring with him wherever he goes. ~Turning The Pages
If you like your mysteries with plenty of thrills with a side of crazy these pages will be flying. ~Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book
Series: An Austin Carr Mystery
The author calls the Genre: A SCREWBALL MYSTERY
First in Series
Paperback: 204 pages
Publisher: Down & Out Books (June 2, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 193749554X ISBN-13: 978-1937495541
E-Book File Size: 457 KB ASIN: B00D3DJMJQ
Synopsis
Root for divorced dad Austin Carr, a funny, oversexed scamp who’ll use anything and everything to get his kids back.
Divorced father Austin Carr wakes up every day in a beat-up camper, parked on someone else’s private property. Why? Because his alimony and child support payments were established by New Jersey’s family court system when his income was double, and for the last two years he has failed to earn the legally mandated monthly nut. He’s had his savings drained, his Maxima repossessed, his salary attached, and his visiting rights suspended. He bought the twelve-year-old Chevy pick-up with the rusty camper for $800 last month because another landlord tossed his butt in the street. Will stretching the rules, his own morals, and the boundaries of common sense raise the cash needed to get his kids back? Or will his big mouth and bad behavior set him up for a nasty double-cross? Find out if Austin can redeem himself and win back his children.
Praise:
“Darkly comic, with an engaging protagonist.” – T.J. MacGregor, Edgar Winner, Author of The Tango Key Mysteries
“Big Numbers is a gritty, sexy, violent, and funny book.” – Liz Clifford at Reviewed by Liz
“Wonderful characters…well-written, entertaining…a good read.” –Connie Anderson for Armchair Interviews
“Jack Getze started his career as a newspaper reporter. As a result, BIG NUMBERS is lean and mean, with not a word wasted. A truly fun, genuinely funny read.” –Lisa Guidarini for Bluestalking Reader
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About Ice Boats by Jack Getze
There are plenty of true stories in BIG NUMBERS, my first Austin Carr mystery — bluefin tuna pulling men off fishing boats, one stockbroker marrying the widow of a rich, newly deceased client, another living in his car to make court-mandated alimony and support payments, scheming redheads. But the biggest true story is Austin Carr himself, a guy who flops like a fish out of water when transported from southern California to New Jersey. In that sense, Austin is me.
After growing up in the suburbs of Los Angeles like my series character, spending the first thirty-seven years of my adult life there, building relationships and a newspaper career, I jumped ship and moved east — joining my new wife’s family in the Red Bank area of central Jersey. The difference was shocking. Like Austin, I found the New Jersey environment beautiful, with considerably more greenery and fresh water than southern California, full of wildlife — but also harsh, in the sense people didn’t seem as friendly or as easy going.
In my first year back east, I complained once in the presence of my wife’s Italian grandmother, a five-foot bundle of wisdom, who – among other accomplishments – danced at Minsky’s, landed a one-thousand pound marlin, and successfully hid from the police a fist-full of illegal betting slips (under her hat) — immediately pulled me aside. She said I needed to hear this story: In the time of America’s experiment with alcohol Prohibition, Grandma Angie said the frozen Navesink River beside downtown Red Bank often harbored rum-running ice boats on winter nights, and shots were not uncommon. Some gun battles kept half of Red Bank awake all night, yet no one ever called the cops, not even when daylight revealed dead bodies on the ice. “Faccia rozzo,” my new grandmother said when she told me the ice boat story. “Red-a-Bank is a hard face, Jack. You be the hard face, too.”
I had to look the Italian words up, and hard face is very close. Rozzo, which she pronounced “dos” was hard to find, but it means tough, rough, crude, even unmannerly. The slang of it, I am told, originally comes from the tanning industry, where soft cow and steer leather becomes “rozzo” after curing.
Obviously, my new Grandma Angie was telling her new grandson to buck up, be tough, and I tried to take her advice. In BIG NUMBERS, I made sure Austin got the same lecture. He needed it badly. And while I have no clue if the condition is factual, the idea of east being tougher than west was my personal experience, and I decided to make it Austin’s, too. True or not, the perception shapes him, and makes for some funny lines and situations.
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Jack Getze
Former Los Angeles Times reporter Jack Getze is Fiction Editor for Anthony nominated Spinetingler Magazine, one of the internet’s oldest websites for noir, crime, and horror short stories. Through the Los Angeles Times/Washington Post News Syndicate, his news and feature stories were published in over five-hundred newspapers and periodicals worldwide. His two screwball mysteries, BIG NUMBERS and BIG MONEY, are being reissued by DOWN & OUT BOOKS, with the new BIG MOJO to follow. His short stories have appeared in A Twist of Noir and Beat to a Pulp. Getze is an Active Member of Mystery Writers of America’s New York Chapter.
Author Links:
http://austincarrscrimediary.blogspot.com
http://jack-getze.blogspot.com
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18050373-big-numbers
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A Peek Inside!
My name’s Austin Carr. I’m a stockbroker. The slick expensive business cards in my wallet say I’m a Senior Financial Consultant for Shore Securities, Inc., Members of the American Association of Securities Dealers, but I’m really just a salesman and I work for myself. Straight commission. If I don’t sell, I don’t eat.
“Another margarita, Luis.”
A lot of people in my line of work call themselves investment counselors. They wear two-thousand-dollar Italian suits, carry alligator attaché cases, think and talk about themselves as professionals like doctors and lawyers. In truth, we’re closer kin to used car dealers, only more dangerous because losing your life savings is a tad worse than getting stuck with a leaky transmission.
It’s hard to sport illusions about yourself when you live in a camper. And I’ve always treated my clients with honesty, to the point of aggravating every sales manager I’ve ever had. Even so, keeping my self respect, I have not been thinking about this job in a favorable light. In fact, in the years since the market crashed, ruining my sales numbers, my finances, and more recently, any chance of being with my two children, Ryan and Beth, I’ve been wracking my brain, trying desperately to figure another way to earn a living.
“Another double?” Luis says.
“Por favor.”
Although no solution to my dilemma has yet presented itself, I’ve discovered it helps to ruminate in a positive setting: Luis’s Mexican Grill on Broad Street in Branchtown. The decor reminds me of home, Los Angeles, and Luis has an authentico Mexican chef, Cruz. Best of all, Luis works the bar himself every day.
“You are not going to work today?” Luis says.
“Careful, Luis. Your query borders on insult. In fact, I have already called work, only to discover that my monster client delayed our scheduled discourse until this afternoon. I stayed here this morning to spend some quality time with you and Cruz.”
“I recommend this be your final cocktail,” Luis says.
Dealing with numbers all the time is an ache in the ass, definitely, but my biggest problem with being a stockbroker is having to spend all day on the money machine, dialing for dollars, calling busy people at the wrong time, apologizing because the back office screwed up a check, downplaying the risks of an investment to exaggerate the benefits, dancing investors from one asset to another so I can take part of their principal as commission. To be a successful stockbroker, you have to be slightly larcenous.
I lick the wet salt from the rim of my still empty margarita glass. Of course I never worried about little things like morality while I was netting five- to ten-thousand dollars a month. It’s only been since my income dropped by more than half, and mainly since I lost physical contact with my children that I search for the social significance of securities sales.
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I have two ebook copies to giveaway today!
To enter, please leave your email address and answer this question,
” Do you like humor mixed into the stories you read? Does it make the story more real for you?”
Giveaway ends October 28th.
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