Book Review: Hustle, The Glass Family Book 3, Owen Mullen
Thriller: Hustle, The Glass Family Book 3, Owen Mullen
Blog Tour January 10, 2022
Having previously read and enjoyed author Owen Mullen’s series about PI Charlie Cameron, I looked forward to getting more of his writing. Although I often complain about dropping into a series somewhere in the middle, I must be more OK with it than I care to acknowledge as a) I do it often, and b) I usually do enjoy the books even with the mental hassle of playing catch-up. So, I will grumble that once again I am jumping into a series later in the sequence. Once again, this book is very good.
Luke Glass is the leader of the Glass Family, a family of gangsters ruling much of London with an iron fist. His sister, Nina, has gotten engaged to one of his security chiefs. Mark Douglas is completely enamored with Nina. A former Scottish cop, Douglas has proven his loyalty to Luke and his commitment to Nina. Equally smitten with her fiance, Nina has contracted with a jeweler to make a custom piece expressing her love for him.
Visiting the jeweler to finalize the design, Nina gets caught up in a brazen robbery by a group of amateur, thrill-seeking thieves. The “Posh Boys” are looking for a quick jewelry score. However, they are more interested in the rush of crime and their robbery quickly becomes a double homicide and a kidnapping. Not knowing who Nina is at first, they take her with them intending to ask for a ransom. Rather than recognizing that kidnapping the sister of a ruthless gangster is a criminally bad idea, they get even more excited about putting one over on the most notorious criminal in London.
Good luck with that.
Owen Mullen does an outstanding job of taking plots both where you expect them to go and into places you never anticipated. I don’t want to give away spoilers, but a gangster novel almost requires that people die. Some of those people die gruesomely. Some of them die unexpectedly. And at the end you are left wondering whether it could have gone in any other direction, even though it did not go entirely in the direction you might have anticipated.
Part of the appeal of gangland novels, to me, is the complicated significance of family. Luke loves his sisters. They love him. In my family, that love is expressed through statements of affection, giving of gifts, enjoying each other’s presence, and similar things. Let’s just say that family gatherings among mobsters are a bit less mellow. Gifts may be things that go well under a Christmas tree. They might also be things that could result in a life behind bars for both the giver and the receiver…not to mention the violent end of life for the gift him/herself. It all depends on the occasion. One thing is definite: the Glass Family does not express their love in half-hearted ways.
Our thanks to Rachel Gilbey of Rachel’s Random Resources for our copy of Hustle, given solely in exchange for our review. The opinions here are those of Scintilla. For other perspectives on this book, check out the other bloggers on this tour. And take a look at our previous reviews on other books by author Owen Mullen.
Also see:
Book Review: The Accused, PI Charlie Cameron Book 4, Owen Mullen
Book Review: Games People Play, PI Charlie Cameron Series, Owen Mullen
Book Review: Hustle, The Glass Family Book 3, Owen Mullen