The Big Get-Even

“Actor Szarabajka’s husky, educated voice is a perfect match for con man and disbarred-lawyer Glen McClinton…Szarabajka’s Glen is a likable mixture of wise-guy sarcasm and occasional self-doubt. The actor toughens his deep rumbly voice for self-confident, quick-to-anger Stan, gives it a faux sophistication for Nancarrow, and ages it for Glen’s uncle Ralph. He sweetens it for Nelly, an innocent local beauty…Szarabajka adds a pleasing layer of affability to the antiheroes, making the audio version of Di Filippo’s brisk, well-structured comedy-thriller irresistible.” —Publishers Weekly (audio review)

“This engrossing mix of revenge tale and caper novel has for a narrator a man straight out of the hard-boiled tradition…What sets this novel apart—besides the flowing writing and deadpan humor—is the writer’s sympathetic curiosity about his characters and the twist ending, which works a change on the old notion that con men are really best at conning each other.” —Booklist

“Hard-boiled crime meets a crew of wise-cracking ex-cons…Fast-moving and funny, The Big Get-Even is as much about its zany cast of ne’er-do-wells as it is about the intricate scam that Glen and his cronies embark on…Glen’s voice permeates the book. His razor-sharp observations of society and criminal life, paired with his dry humor, are the perfect accompaniment to the breakneck speed of the plot…As amusing as it is tension filled, The Big Get-Even is crime fiction at its best.” —Foreword Reviews

“Keith Szarabajka brings this complicated story to life, playing the parts of very different men and women who are all out to get rich. His icy portrayal of the sexy-but-dead-inside Vee is so good it’s almost scary…In between all the grifts and grab, listeners find there is a lot of love at the run-down hotel in the mountains that the gang tries to pass off as a site for a casino.” —AudioFile

“This is an astonishingly accomplished, virtually seamless caper-suspense novel, a genre which the late Donald Westlake brought (in his Dortmunder novels) as close to perfection as any writer living or dead and which Paul Di Filippo has, in The Big Get-Even, made equally his own. I have long written of Westlake (1933–2008) that he gave more pleasure per capita than any novelist living or dead and in mourning his loss I called him ‘irreplaceable,’ but here is Paul Di Filippo and here is this novel and they have shaken and inspired. I hope there will be more of these and that I will be present for at least some. Having referenced the great Westlake, I should add Elmore Leonard’s name: the dialogue here is as mordantly accurate, the characters as endearingly unscrupulous and intense, the situation limned with his utter clarity of madness.” —Barry N. Malzberg

“The Big Get-Even mixes the cocktail of classic noir with a style and panache utterly Paul Di Filippian. It blends a cast of sexy and larcenous guys and molls (and one pretty-boy rotten yegg), a wittily suspenseful buildup, and a gasp-provoking payoff into a highly palatable intoxicant. I drank it off straight in nearly one draught, and I commend it to you as a bracing tonic for the blues and the blahs, no chaser necessary.” —Michael Bishop, author of Ancient of Days

“Improbable, inevitable, sexy, and fun. I couldn’t put it down.” —Michael Blumlein, award-winning author of The Brains of Rats and All I Ever Dreamed