Blown by Mark Haskell Smith

Published by Grove Press/Black Cat on June 12, 2018

Bryan LeBlanc is a currency trader for an investment bank. Bryan has gone on vacation to the Dominican Republic, ditching his girlfriend and leaving his department manager, Seo-yun Kim, to handle the blowback when clients discover that money drawn on margin from their accounts has vanished into a bewildering network of transactions. Bryan has about $17 million to finance a comfortable lifestyle if he can avoid getting caught.

Neal Nathanson works for LeBlanc’s employer. Neal’s job is to track down investors who have skipped out on their margin calls. He’s been assigned to track down Bryan. Neal teams with Seo-yun to accomplish that mission. Seo-yun’s relationship with her irritating fiancé (he calls her forty times a day to discuss wedding plans) adds an additional layer of humor to this light crime story.

Bryan’s troubles compound as he makes his way to Grand Cayman, where his accomplice is holding his cash. His accomplice is untrustworthy, and a diminutive but well-endowed private detective from Curaçao named Piet Room has taken a break from seducing tourists to help Neal and Seo-yun track Bryan. Less scrupulous people on the scent of easy money, including a frustrated seascape painter, are also trying to find Bryan. When his situation becomes precarious, Bryan finds his personality changing in ways he doesn’t much like as he adapts to a dangerous lifestyle.

The novel actually begins at the end, with Neal adrift in a broken boat with no food or water until he’s rescued by Chlöe, who is sailing around the world solo to raise awareness of some disease she doesn’t care about. So what happened to Bryan and Seo-yun and the well-endowed Piet and the seascape painter who has stirred Neal’s erotic fantasies? It’s obvious from the beginning that something has gone wrong for someone. Maybe something has gone wrong for nearly everyone. The fun lies in following the well-paced plot until it catches up to the opening pages.

I would classify Blown as thriller light. It mixes comedy with suspense, and while the story is more chuckle-out-loud funny than belly-laugh funny, the comedy dominates. As thieves go, it is easy enough to like Bryan because he’s a decent guy despite his decision to gain freedom through larceny. It’s also easy to like Seo-yun and Neal, two wildly different characters who are both distracted by relationship problems as they chase after Bryan. All of the characters are flawed in ways that make them plausible human beings. With the exception of Neal, none are particularly virtuous — they tend to be enslaved by their temptations and then to be haunted by guilt — but that only enhances their amusement value. And a couple of the characters seem to be discovering themselves as the story moves forward. It’s nice to believe that it is never too late for that to happen.

Even though part of the ending is revealed at the novel’s beginning, the ending holds some surprises. Readers who want novels to reflect a better world than the one we inhabit might be disappointed in the novel’s outcomes, but the fates of the various characters come together in such unexpected and amusing ways that the story’s reminder that reality is frequently unjust doesn’t feel oppressive. At the same time, the ending suggests the possibility of redemption. Blown is a difficult balancing act, pitting good against evil and acknowledging all the gray area in between, but it finds a balance that is both satisfying and entertaining, all captured by the final line of dialog: “Everything is shit and everything is beautiful.”

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