The Answer Man
From AwardAnnals
| Book: | The Answer Man |
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| Author: | Roy Johansen |
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| Publisher: | Bantam |
Then Myth Daniels, the most beautiful woman he’s ever set eyes on, walks into his favorite bar. Little does he realize that everything is about to change. Five minutes after they meet, she takes him home, to a posh Atlanta neighborhood of fancy cars, manicured lawns, and security gates. And that’s when she offers him $50,000 in cash for one job.
Myth Daniels is a lawyer, and running into Ken at the bar was no accident. Her client Burton Sabini stands accused of embezzling $12 million from his company. Now she’s offering a deal to Ken Parker: Teach her client how to beat the polygraph, and Ken will walk away rich. Not exactly ethical…but ethics don’t pay the rent.
But Ken—more than anyone—should know the price of a lie. Just days after he takes the deal, two bodies turn up brutally murdered, and the one link between them is Ken. Now the only way out is to find the $12 million before his life crumbles completely. Even if the search marks him as a suspect in the two murders. Even if it makes him a target for the real killer. As he’s drawn deeper into an explosive game of greed and violence, the question will be how to stay alive. And this time, not even the Answer Man knows.
A gritty, gripping debut thriller, Roy Johansen’s The Answer Man is a pulse-pounding novel of dangerous seduction and unrelenting suspense.
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Reviews
Amazon.com
If Roy Johansen’s first thriller has a definite cinematic flair, it’s no big surprise: he’s a successful screenwriter. But there’s a lot more than visual movement to recommend this exciting and original novel—beginning with a hero with an entirely new occupation. Atlanta-based Ken Parker runs a polygraph service, administering lie-detector tests to felons. And it’s no lie that his own life is a mess of bad debts and failed responsibilities. So when a gorgeous lawyer named Myth Daniels and her client Burton Sabini offer Parker a much-needed $50,000 to help Burton pass an upcoming polygraph test, Parker hesitates for only a heartbeat before accepting. But his luck continues to run cold: a man whose life was ruined by a faulty polygraph reading attacks him. This man then winds up dead, closely followed by Burton Sabini. Not surprisingly, Parker fits the frame for both murders. The only person who believes he didn’t do it is a marvelous creation called Hound Dog, a 21-year-old woman who photographs crime scenes. She and Parker have the kind of offbeat energy and instant credibility that get you over a couple of rough spots in Johansen’s quirky and compulsively readable fiction debut. —Dick Adler
Barnes and Noble
In his high-powered debut novel, award-winning Hollywood screenwriter Roy Johansen takes readers into the precarious existence of Ken Parker, a down-and-out lie detector operator who accepts a deadly bribe to teach a beautiful lawyer’s client to beat the machine he knows so well. Known as the Answer Man, Parker is a master at catching lies and uncovering subterfuge. Now that the violence is rapidly closing in on him, his special talents may never be more handy.
