STINKING RICH
By Rob Brunet
Down & Out Books
277 pages
Danny Grant is a young Canadian just out of high school with absolutely no talent or ambition to get ahead in life. More content to be a pothead slacker, he survives pulling whatever scams will bring him quick, easy cash. Then he lands a dream job, watching over a huge crop of marijuana for a biker gang. But is he has no clue who hired him. All contact is done via texting etc. Danny’s job is to make sure the plants, growing in a big barn on the abandoned country farm are kept watered until harvested.
For this he’s paid several thousand dollars a week; money he quickly loses at a local Indian run casino. All of which leads to him accidentally clubbing another slacker in the head with a baseball bat and the poor guy. He buries the corpse in the woods behind a trailer park. As soon as the biker gang sells their crop, Danny plans to take his final paycheck and vamoose.
But his luck continues to run bad and during the night of the drug exchange, a police officer stumbles onto the scene. Then someone torches the packed grass and the entire barn goes up in flames. Bikers and their buyers scatter and in the confusion a duffel bag containing seventy-five thousand dollars disappears. In truth, Danny has escaped with it. He buries the loot under the outhouse of an old man who lives in the woods and then is promptly arrested and sent to prison on a manslaughter charge.
And that’s just the opening chapters of Rob Brunet’s hilarious crime comedy filled with some of the craziest, eccentric characters you’ll ever find packed together between two covers; both crooked and decent. The plot goes into high gear when it skips ahead to Danny’s release from prison, an occurrence that has lots of people excited. These include Perko Ratwick, the idiot biker who had hired Danny in the first place. Since that night of the barn fire, the rest of his grungy gang blame him for the loss of their money and fully expect him to make amends by retrieving it. Then there’s Officer Max Ainsley, the cop who accidently stumbled onto the drug buy and interrupted it He is considered incompetent by his colleagues for not having called in back-up and having allowed the money to go missing. Add to this cast the sexy Linette, Danny’s public defender who wants the money for herself and seduces Officer Ainsley into helping her find it.
Of course the only person who knows where the money is hidden is Danny. Imagine his surprise when he digs up the outhouse to discover the duffel bag is gone!
Trying to properly describe “Stinking Rich” is like trying to catch grasshoppers. You no sooner snatch up one then a dozen jump up all over the place. There are lots of other great supporting characters that fill this wacky crime story and this reviewer was shaking his head and chuckling often before the entire madcap carousel finally spun down to an exhaustive finish. Rob Brunet is a gifted writer who somehow manages to corral a dozen insane characters and through them tell a tale unlike any we’ve ever heard before. He is a name you want to keep an eye on. We certainly will.
