
"It must have been a hell of a night. One of those long, dangerous nights where the world shifts and doors open. A night of bad judgment and wrong turns, of weariness and hilarity and a hard sexual charge that both frightens and compels. A night where your life changes irrevocably, for better or for worse, but who the hell cares, so long as it changes.
It must have been a night just like that, yeah, if only I could remember it."
All Victor Carl knows is that he's just woken up with his suit in tatters, his socks missing, and a stinging pain in his chest thanks to a new tattoo he doesn't remember getting: a heart inscribed with the name Chantal Adair.
"My apartment is trashed, my partnership is cracking up, I'm drinking too much, flirting with reporters, sleeping with Realtors. Frankly, I'm in desperate need of something hard and clean in my life, and finding Chantal is all I have."
Is Chantal Adair the love of Victor's life or a terrible drunken mistake? Victor intends to find out, but right now he's got bigger concerns. His client, a wanted man, needs to come in out of the cold, and he's got a stolen painting for Victor to use as leverage.
But someone is not happy that the painting has surfaced. Or that the client is threatening to tell all. Or that Victor is sniffing around for information about Chantal Adair. The closer Victor comes to figuring it all out, the deeper into danger he falls, as the ghosts of the past return to claim what's theirs.
©2006 William Lashner; (P)2006 HarperCollinsPublishers
"Carl works his grimy, self-deprecating charm for all it's worth." (Publishers Weekly)
"Lashner thoroughly enjoys exploring the darker, seamier, grungier side of his lead character." (Booklist)
Ever have one of those mornings when you wake up with a hangover and a strange woman's name tattooed on your chest? In THE MARKED MAN, the listener gets to follow attorney Victor Carl as he tries to piece together his missing hours. Reader Richard Rohan has just the right touch of Bogart noir to pull the story off. His cynical smirk can be heard as Carl tromps through Philadelphia strip clubs and meets with over-the-hill Jersey mobsters as he tries to find his lost hours and help a reformed gangster turn legit. Rohan's Jersey mobster is classic, and he effortlessly switches from character to character, leaving no doubt who's speaking. 2007 Audies Award Finalist (c) AudioFile 2006
About AudioFile