Synopses & Reviews
She's looking for the truth in a place where there are no easy answers-- only deadly secrets...
The daughter of a Florida drug runner, Alison Kerry lives from day to day, in seedy motels, surviving on cigarettes, Wild Turkey, and the adrenaline rush of danger. Allie is a runner and her latest job should go down easy: easy pickup, easy payoff-- easy money. But in a bar outside Seattle, everything goes horribly wrong. Allie finds her contact with a bullet in his brain-- and a government-issued Colt in his jacket.
Suddenly Allie has a killer on her trail, and the computer disk he killed for burning a hole in her pocket. For Allie, it's a cross-country journey through the Cascade Mountains to the winding back roads of Montana and into the darkest corners of a country's secret history. Because somewhere between the killing fields of Vietnam and the wide-open heartlands of America, a horrifying truth is buried. A truth about a people, a war, and one woman's past. A truth Allie may not survive...
Review
"As a thriller alone, Easy Money is perhaps only a little above the crowd: the pages keep turning, but the plot is nothing special. What are special are the feelings of being inside the protagonist's head that Siler generates, and the enjoyable uniqueness of that same protagonist. As we're told the story of a young courier unrepentantly on the wrong side of the law, the glimpses into a way of life we may never know come across as very authentic, and the courier's thoughts and actions very real. To be honest, the clankiness of the plot sometimes even intrudes a little on the writing; Siler may do better writing more subtly than demanded by blood-and-guts seekers. Highly enjoyable, very different, an outstanding debut piece." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Review
"In her first novel, 27-year-old author Jenny Siler has shown tough-guy thriller writers how a woman does it. And she packs some punch."--
The Wall Street Journal"Once in a blue moon, a new writer speaks up in a voice that gets your attention like a rifle shot. Jenny Siler has that kind of voice...Clean, direct, and a little dangerous...An intensely vivid piece of writing."-- The New York Times Book Review
"Jenny Siler's Easy Money is not just a fine first novel, it's a fine novel-- smart, funny, hard-boiled, tough-minded, and full of wonderful writing-- a great read as it bats catty-corner across the squalid underbelly of America, skidding through the black ice of personal betrayal and political lies, darting through a thunderstorm of gunfire, surviving it all. Easy Money is the real deal, the beginning of a great career."-- James Crumley, author of The Last Good Kiss
About the Author
Jenny Siler has worked as a forklift driver, a furniture mover, a grape picker, a salmon grader, a tutor to deaf students, a waitress, a sketch model, and a bartender. She lives in Missoula, Montana.
Easy Money is her first novel.