Pro Bono by Thomas Perry

Published by Mysterious Press on January 14, 2025

When Charlie Warren was a teen, his mother Linda started dating Mack Stone. Perhaps put off by a name that sounds like the invention of a bottom shelf thriller writer, Charlie never got along with Mack, even after he married his mom. Then he discovered that Mack was stealing money from his mother’s accounts. Mack nearly burned down the family home as he made his escape, but Charlie miraculously put out the fire, used a borrowed car to chase down Mack, and ran him off the road where he crashed into a tree.

As Charlie is driving away from the scene of the crash, he passes an oncoming bus full of prisoners who are fighting fires. The bus stops at the crash scene and two of the prisoners — Andy Minkeagan and Alvin Copes — recover Mack’s documents from the truck, including records of his stolen investments and convenient proof of his actual identity. The prisoners see Charlie’s face as he speeds past and deduce that he caused the crash, a deduction of Sherlockian power. That coincidental encounter sets the scene for the rest of the story.

In the present, Charlie is a lawyer who specializes in recovering hidden funds, usually in the context of divorce. Vesper Ellis retains him after noticing that three years after her husband’s death, someone using his identity has been withdrawing funds from his investment accounts. Charlie is a CPA as well as a lawyer, so he quickly confirms that there is something fishy about the accounts held by two different firms.

The financial thieves who stole from Vesper are married to two sisters — May and Rose — who enjoy the lifestyles their crooked husbands provide. Thomas Perry provides no convincing reason to believe that the sisters would be murderous, yet they need to be to keep the plot in motion. The sisters have a brother named Peter who turns up from time to time without adding anything of significance to the story.

Most of the story is dedicated to Charlie’s efforts to recover Vesper’s stolen money, as well as additional sums to keep the firms’ wrongdoing confidential. For reasons that only make sense to Charlie, he does this pro bono rather than taking a third of the millions he manages to recover for Vesper. A lawyer can’t shag a current client so he isn’t motivated by sex, although Vesper clearly wants to give him a naked reward for his efforts.

The rest of the plot relates to the money stolen from Charlie’s mother. As Charlie chases the crooked husbands, he enlists the help of Andy and Alvin, who have been released from prison and plan to force Charlie to help them access his mother’s stolen funds. To foil their scheme, Charlie has to become a tough guy superhero. He just doesn’t seem the type, creating yet another plot point that I couldn’t accept.

Even less probable is Charlie’s plan to reform the criminals by putting them on his payroll with the promise that they’ll get a fair share of the money after Charlie recovers it. Now I'm all in favor of reforming criminals, but I'm not willing to employ two ex-cons after they point their guns at me. Charlie's saintly qualities are a bit much in a guy who murdered a man for swindling his mother.

Obligatory action scenes justify the novel’s marketing as a thriller, culminating in a plan by the sisters to protect their husbands by befriending Charlie’s mother and then doing away with her. Like Charlie, Linda has an improbable knack for avoiding death. A final improbability involves Charlie’s uncanny knowledge that his mother will need rescuing despite the absence of any reason to fear for her safety.

The plot of Pro Bono is mildly interesting because it focuses on financial crime rather than the typical thriller obsession with serial killers. The coincidences and strains in logic that drive the plot are the novel’s most serious flaw, but the flaw is so often repeated that it detracts from Perry’s effort to build suspense.

Perry always writes in a plodding style, making the success of his novels turn on whether he tells an intriguing story. Pro Bono is sufficiently intriguing to earn a guarded recommendation, but I won’t be putting it high on my list of 2025 thriller recommendations.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS