{"id":7615,"date":"2018-12-11T07:44:21","date_gmt":"2018-12-11T12:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7615"},"modified":"2018-12-11T08:39:22","modified_gmt":"2018-12-11T13:39:22","slug":"101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7615","title":{"rendered":"*****101"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Tom Pitts \u2013 Book publicists are fond of the awkward adjective \u201cunputdownable,\u201dbut in the case of Tom Pitts\u2019s new California crime thriller, this enthusiastic description is wholly justified. Those familiar with California will recognize 101<\/a> as the highway that runs the length of California from Los Angeles\u2014where it\u2019s part of the world\u2019s busiest and most nightmarish freeway interchange\u2014north to the Oregon border and beyond. Pitts\u2019s book focuses on that northern bit, from the Bay Area up to Humboldt County, where a different kind of traffic is all-important: weed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book is set in mid-2016, six months before California voters will legalize marijuana, and the impending vote has made the Humboldt County growers more paranoid than usual. They\u2019re accustomed to warding off rustlers and junkies and deer and water-thieves, but unsure how to arm themselves for a massive market shift. Pitts\u2019s description of the steep hillside partly covered in redwoods and brambles and the long, rutted dirt track up to where the nervous growers live is so vivid you could almost choke on the dust of their ATVs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vic Thomas runs one of these hillside growing operations, out of the sight of most people, which is exactly how he likes it. Twenty years before, he and a woman he\u2019d never met before, Barbara Bertram, witnessed a horrible crime and, in self-defense, meted out a little on-the-spot justice. The experience bonded them forever. The police totally misunderstood what went on in that charnel-house and have been trying to track down Barbara and Vic ever since. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story opens with a middle-of-the-night call from Barbara. She tells Vic her son Jerry is in trouble again, and she wants to send him to Vic so he can lie low awhile among the marijuana growers. Vic can\u2019t tell her no. Alas, Jerry is a serial screw-up with less sense than Vic\u2019s dogs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vic is not pleased when he discovers that Jerry and his girlfriend Piper stole a considerable amount of cash from a Russian who runs a Bay Area weed club. His name is Vlad\u2014\u201cVlad the Inhaler\u201d\u2014and he and his mobsters are determined to get their money back and make an example of Jerry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Piper finds her way up the hill to Jerry\u2019s \u201chideout,\u201d Vic recognizes that his unwelcome guest can\u2019t keep his mouth shut. He\u2019s even more alarmed when he realizes Piper\u2019s stepfather is the head of the Dead BBs, a vicious outlaw motorcycle gang. Vlad has a financial relationship with the BBs, which makes them equally determined to find Jerry and Piper and reclaim the money. The stepfather considers Jerry completely expendable and Piper only slightly less so. Pitts shifts the narrative point of view frequently, so you know not only what Vic is thinking, but also what Vlad and the Dead BBs are up to. You\u2019re never in doubt about the danger heading up the 101 toward Vic, Jerry, Piper, and anyone else who gets in the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With three sets of determined antagonists\u2014the Russians, the Dead BBs, and the cops\u2014looking for some combination of Jerry, Piper, and Vic, the opportunities for mayhem expand exponentially, and Pitts has deftly orchestrated the chase. There\u2019s no time here for literary flourishes, maybe just a dash to the fridge for a beer, right in step with the denizens of 101. AMAZON LINK HERE<\/a>.
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By Tom Pitts \u2013 Book publicists are fond of the awkward adjective \u201cunputdownable,\u201dbut in the case of Tom Pitts\u2019s new California crime thriller, this enthusiastic description is wholly justified. Those familiar with California will recognize 101 as the highway that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"101 - Before California voters legalized marijuana, if someone talked about the traffic on the northern stretches of Highway 101, they weren't talking about cars.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,53,40,126,32],"tags":[1465,390,1466,1464],"class_list":["post-7615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-criminal","category-fiction","category-reading-2","category-thriller","tag-1465","tag-california","tag-marijuana","tag-tom-pitts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/marijuana.jpg?fit=480%2C720&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s2NkiT-101","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7615"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7620,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7615\/revisions\/7620"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}