{"id":7915,"date":"2019-04-29T06:33:32","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T10:33:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7915"},"modified":"2025-08-19T14:28:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T18:28:17","slug":"the-last-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7915","title":{"rendered":"*****The Last Act"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Brad Parks \u2013 In an author\u2019s note, Parks reveals the book\nwas motivated by a real-life episode. Between 2004 and 2007, the U.S. mega-bank\nWachovia failed to use appropriate money-laundering controls and cleansed at\nleast $378 billion dollars from the Mexican drug cartel Sinaloa, reaping\nbillions of dollars in fees. While the bank ultimately received a fine, modest\ncompared to its gains, \u201cno Wachovia executive faced criminal charges, nor\nserved a single day in prison.\u201d Wachovia was subsequently bought by Wells\nFargo, where\nthe practice has continued<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But can Parks\u2019s sense of outrage translate into fiction\nwithout becoming polemical? Absolutely. His unlikely protagonist is Tommy Jump,\na former child star, small in stature but aging out of his career in musical\ntheater and still too young for character roles. He\u2019s at loose ends, ending a\ngig as Sancho Panza in The Man of\nLaMancha<\/em>, when he\u2019s approached by an old high school buddy, now an FBI\nagent. He offers Tommy a deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The FBI wants the actor to pose as a felon and infiltrate\nthe minimum-security Federal Correctional Institution in Martinsburg, West\nVirginia, where convicted banker Mitchell Dupree is confined. As a bank\nexecutive, Dupree helped a Mexican drug cartel launder more than a billion\ndollars, and has hidden away a trove of evidence, which the FBI hopes can bring\nthe cartel to its knees. But the documents are Dupree\u2019s insurance policy. If\nanything happens to him or his family, they will be released to the\nauthorities. So he\u2019s not sharing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They want Tommy to find out where they\u2019re hidden. It will be\nthe acting job of his career. No one at the prison, not even the warden, will\nknow he\u2019s not a real prisoner, because secrets have an inconvenient habit of\nleaking. He\u2019ll have six months to befriend Dupree and discover where the\ndocuments are. In return, he\u2019ll be at least $150,000 richer. Tommy\u2019s out of\nwork, his pregnant girlfriend is an artist with no regular income. They don\u2019t\nwant to think of themselves as people tempted by money, but they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Tommy, now Pete, enters prison, author Parks does a\nterrific job describing his mental state and coping mechanisms, and the\nstrategies he uses to befriend Dupree. You get a strong sense not just of the\nphysical environment, but of the power structure and the people within it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the set-up. I won\u2019t say more about plot, because you should discover for yourself the agonizing twists Parks has in store. As every major character launches some competing smokescreen, this is a book you won\u2019t be able to put down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brad Parks \u2013 In an author\u2019s note, Parks reveals the book was motivated by a real-life episode. Between 2004 and 2007, the U.S. mega-bank Wachovia failed to use appropriate money-laundering controls and cleansed at least $378 billion dollars from … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7914,"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":"*****The Last Act - a former child star infiltrates a prison to perform the acting gig of his life. Don't miss this one!","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":[1335,53,40,126],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-amateur-detective","category-criminal","category-fiction","category-reading-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Money.jpg?fit=321%2C426&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-23F","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7915","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=7915"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11555,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7915\/revisions\/11555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}