Boost

Sam Hill steals cars. Not just any cars, but collectible cars, rare works of automotive artistry. Sam's a specialist, and he's made a good life for himself in Albuquerque. Things change one night after he steals a primo 1965 Thunderbird from a lawyer's house. In the trunk, Sam finds a corpse, a police informant with a bullet hole between his eyes. And he learns that cops are swarming the garage where he'd planned to deliver the T-Bird. Using his own resourcefulness as well as the assistance of his two pals, apprentice thief Billy Suggs and an inscrutable giant named Way-Way Henderson, Sam learns who's behind the body in the trunk: Phil Ortiz, a notorious drug dealer and car collector. Sam, it seems, boosted Ortiz's favorite car—a green low-rider painted with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe—and Ortiz is determined to get even. And to get that car back. The stakes get higher with each round of one-upmanship. Finally, it's clear that Ortiz won't quit until he has the last laugh and Sam Hill is dead. In Boost, Steve Brewer stirs up his usual potent mixture of high crime and low comedy in a rollicking novel where car thieves are the good guys and the action never stops. Steve Brewer spent 22 years in the newspaper business before turning to fiction full time in 1997. He writes a weekly humor column for The Albuquerque Tribune, which is distributed nationally by Scripps Howard News Service. He lives in Redding, California, with his wife, two sons and a dog named Elvis.