Review: The Upper Hand

The Upper Hand by Johnny Shaw
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received a free copy for review from the author.

Having a group of thieves and con men as your extended family sounds kind of cool, but you’d better keep your hand on your wallet at the reunions.

The three Ucker kids have drifted apart since their father died and was shown to be a thief. Axel has a good job at a bank, but his hobby is drawing up elaborate plans for robberies that he never pulls. Gretchen makes her living by stealing valuable comic books from nerds. The youngest, Kurt, stayed in their old hometown to take care of their aging mother and keep playing death metal with his friends in a garage band.

After their mother dies the three siblings are shocked to learn that she left everything including her house to her favorite TV evangelist, Brother Floom. Another surprise comes when they meet their aunt, an imposing woman who calls herself “Mother”. (Yeah, that’s right. She’s Mother Ucker.)

Mother informs the three that most of the extended Ucker family are criminals, and she introduces all of them. Then she reveals that Brother Floom is really their grandfather who assumed another identity years ago. This is all part of Mother’s pitch to teach them the family business with the ultimate goal of ripping off Floom.

Johnny Shaw always delivers a great mix of crime and humor, and this story plays to his strengths with this comic caper that involves a variety of schemes, double crosses, elaborate robbery plans that never quite work, and a family with more than its share of dysfunction. It’s a romp with a plot that’s constantly moving and a varied cast of characters that has a genuine laugh on almost every page. It’s also got enough heart and brains to it to keep it from being more than just a collection of gags and goofy situations.

My one complaint is that there are so many moving parts to the plot that some things just don’t end up making any sense, and Shaw even acknowledges that in the wrap up with one character shrugging off inconsistencies by saying that they were ideas and improvisations that weren’t needed in the end. That’s a bit of a cheat, but it didn’t really bother me because stories built around elaborate cons and schemes are frequently designed to keep things from the audience, not necessarily to make sense within the story. See the scene in Oceans’s 11 when George Clooney is questioned about why one of their own crew wasn’t told about a key piece of the plan. Clooney’s response is to essentially wink at the camera and say, “What fun would that have been?”

It’s a similar thing here. If you like the story, it works. I liked this just fine, and it worked for me.

Full disclosure – I once contributed an unpaid review to Shaw’s Blood & Tacos e-zine.

View all my reviews