Book Overview
The perfect robbery with an airtight alibi. The hiest executed flawlessly; or was it? Did Sterling leave a single drop of blood at the crime scene? If he did, will it even be found?
It was only a jewelry theft; why is Sterling now being charged with murder?
Sterling’s life used to be simple, orderly and on plan. How could a single drop of blood change everything?
Reviews
Blueink Review
A Single Drop
Larry Cutts
iUniverse, 210 pages, (paperback), $13.99, 9781532065873
(Reviewed: July, 2019)
Larry Cutts’ new novel A Single Drop follows an unlikely lawbreaker whose troubles only increase when he gets away with the perfect crime.
Sterling is an accountant who prides himself on maintaining complete control over his life. For instance, when his wife files for divorce, Sterling copes by devising a budget. Soon thereafter, Sterling promises to help his gambling-addicted father repay his debt to a violent gangster. When his efforts to raise the money come up dry, Sterling devises a drastic plan: robbing one of his clients. True to form, Sterling plans his crime meticulously, from the break-in to the alibi.
His watertight alibi for the burglary is no help, however, when he finds himself accused of another crime that occurred later that night at the same scene. Now in the crosshairs of the Russian mafia as well as law enforcement, Sterling must rely on his beautiful lawyer to get him out of trouble in one piece.
Approximately the first half of A Single Drop is engaging and highly entertaining. The novel begins with a hilarious scene in which a younger Sterling, almost in spite of himself, saves the life of the president of the United States. From there, Cutts does a masterful job introducing Sterling and making him sympathetic despite his neuroses.
However, when Sterling and his lawyer wind up on the run, the novel takes a sharp downhill turn in quality. The writing grows bland, and the story unfolds largely through often-wooden dialogue. Its resolution is clever, but readers will not necessarily push through the book’s lackluster second half to reach it.
Cutts has done an excellent job developing his protagonist and setting up the novel’s plot. If A Single Drop’s second half could be revised to extend those virtues, it would have much greater appeal to readers.
Also available as an ebook.
Kirkus Review
A SINGLE DROP
Larry Cutts
iUniverse (210 pp.)
$13.99 paperback, $3.99 e-book
ISBN: 978-1-5320-6587-3; February 3, 2019
In this debut crime novel, an accountant stages a robbery to pay off a murderous creditor.
Nosebleed-prone accountant Sterling Charles Russell III has just gotten divorced, and he’s having trouble making ends meet now that so much of his paycheck is going toward alimony. This is before he gets a call from his degenerate gambler father, JR, who owes $40,000 to a dangerous loan shark named Ned the Knees. Ned is the primary suspect in the murder of Sterling’s mother a year before—the first victim of JR’s compulsive gambling. Now Sterling has 28 days to come up with the money or his father will join his mother in the afterlife. A visit to a jeweler client in order to pawn a necklace gives Sterling an idea: “Chapman opened the safe door; diamonds, rings, gold and a stack of cash. Receipts on his desk for tens of thousands of dollars from jewelry brokers. Sterling did his books. He never reported any of these commissions. He was loaded.” The accountant puts a devious one-man plan in place that uses his accounting skills as cover for a heist. Unfortunately, Sterling may have left a single drop of blood from his nose at the scene of the crime. And when the police show up at his apartment the next morning, they aren’t just interested in finding the culprit in the jewelry store robbery, but in a murder that took place not long afterward. Cutts’ narrative is fast-paced and high-stakes, pulling readers through complication after complication. Unfortunately, his choppy prose often gets in the way, robbing the novel of some of it potential immersiveness: “The one on the left was a huge man, about 40; receding hair with a ponytail; two or three days of beard growth; arms the size of Sterling’s leg with too many tattoos to count. He was filthy, smelled and had terrible breath! His only words were, ‘you go there,’ pointing to the top bunk on the other side.” Sterling is a sympathetic figure, but the story is so rushed that there is little time for complex characterization or even suspense. It’s a quick read that will keep the audience engaged, but it could have been much more.
A swift but messy heist tale.
Clarion Review
A Single Drop
Larry Cutts
iUniverse (Feb 3, 2019)
Softcover $13.99 (210pp) 978-1-5320-6587-3
A Single Drop is a tongue-in-cheek thriller about an accountant-turned-hero whose errors are engaging.
In Larry Cutts’s lighthearted thriller A Single Drop, a mild-mannered man faces a world of trouble, including mobsters, loan sharks, and a presidential assassination attempt.
Sterling is an accountant, and his story begins with the assassination attempt, as he and the president dodge bullets and return fire until they are rescued by the Secret Service. The text then jumps to two years later, with Sterling back at his firm in Boston, and his life back to being routine.
But then Sterling’s wife asks for a divorce and is awarded a hefty settlement, and his father calls, telling him a bookie wants his money or else. Things get worse and Sterling hatches a plot to get the money to save his father, though the best way he can imagine fixing the problem is by robbing a shady jewelry store that his firm represents. This choice causes him more grief, with Sterling put up against the Russian mob and the FBI and facing a court case to decide his future.
Sterling’s problems are resolved with a pleasant mixture of expected solutions and quirky ideas. Sterling uses his methodical mind to plan the perfect jewelry robbery, thinking about how to break in, leave no trace, and have a solid alibi. This all works perfectly—then cops show up at his door, claiming that he killed the jewelry store owner. He becomes trapped in his own clever thinking, resulting in a tragic comedy of errors, with each new resolution bringing a fresh problem, driving the narrative forward.
Enter Sarah, Sterling’s public defender, whom he meets when he can’t afford his own lawyer. The tough, beautiful attorney is taken with him. Their relationship follows a predictable path, though they end up on the run from gangsters, and is genuine and heartfelt. The remaining supporting cast of characters are more generic set pieces who function to drive the plot.
As fun as these developments are, typos and clichés weaken the work. An ongoing chess metaphor aims to help keep track of the importance of various plot points, but it instead breaks the flow of the action. Within chapters, the narrative transitions between characters’ thoughts without enough notice, and clarity about what is happening is lost. The writing is at its best when it focuses on action.
Working toward a courtroom confrontation, the book leaves Sterling serving a brief sentence, in love with a beautiful woman, and working on repairing his relationship with his father. He’s a character you want to pull for, even as he’s making mistakes; his willingness to take wild risks and try new things, and his earnest hope that things can get better, make him a worthy hero.
A Single Drop is a tongue-in-cheek thriller about an accountant-turned-hero that adds up to be more than the sum of its parts.
JEREMIAH ROOD (July 23, 2019)