The Jimmy Hoffa disappearance is one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century.
This fictional story uses historical facts and theories to tell an entire story.

You start out with Sam Silver, an FBI agent that eventually leaves to have a private practice in order to have more time for his son (Max) and he is hired to watch Hoffa. He happens to be watching the day Hoffa disappears. One year later, Sam dies while out on his sailboat.

Ten years after his father's death, Max receives a call from Sam's lawyer saying there's a letter that his dad left for him with instructions to wait 10 years to give it to Max. This letter opens a can of worms so to speak.

Now Max and his girlfriend, Morgan, find themselves in a world where they have to evaluate everything based on risk. There are things happening around them and to them...

Okay, so I had a very hard time with this book because I knew nothing more than the broad details of the story. I would recommend at least doing a little bit of research and familiarizing yourself with the Hoffa disappearance mystery if you're not familiar.

I thoroughly enjoyed Max's storyline and the book itself picks up halfway through until the end.
I also loved the author explaining what inspired the story including the character Max in the afterward.

The story is written in multiple points of view in different periods of time which can be a bit confusing but ultimately it's labeled to make it easier to flip back and forth in time.

The book is very descriptive so if you're someone that is good at imagining fashion, buildings, people, etc then you'll enjoy the details included. I am not a visual reader so if someone tells me some guy is in a suit, that's about all my brain reads.

Ultimately, this is 3/5 stars for me but I can absolutely understand how this would be much higher rated for those with a better understanding of the history of the event.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book and provide my honest feedback.

Combining fictional characters with historical characters, particularly in the context of a well-known event about which many people already have opinions, is a tricky business. On the whole, Lew Paper does well with that and fashions from it a readable and intriguing novel well worth your time.

Two quibbles. First, the ending was downright lame, so much so that the last major chunk of the novel consists of nothing but people sitting around and explaining to each other, and the reader, exactly what has just happened. Second, while the author's reverence for detail was impressive, sometimes he allowed that reverence to overwhelm the narrative. For example, just because a character goes to dinner at the Palm, it isn't necessary to include the entire history of the Palm restaurants, right down to the names of the men who started the first one.

One more thing. The ARC that was provided by the publisher was a mess. Huge chunks of the text were run together without spacing between words, which made much of the reading awkward, annoying, and unpleasant. The author spun out a good enough narrative to make it worthwhile to stick with it and suffer through decoding the mangled text, but the publisher should be ashamed to send something this badly formatted out to reviewers. In a time when any home hobby writer can produce perfect text with readily available, inexpensive software, it is inexcusable for a company claiming to be a professional publisher to circulate something this sloppy. Authors deserve far more respectful treatment than that.

This was a wonderfully done what if concept, it had that feel that I was looking for and enjoyed the overall concept of this. It worked with the Jimmy Hoffa element and had that tense atmosphere that I was hoping for and enjoyed getting in this story. The characters worked well overall in this story and were written well in this time-line. Lew Paper wrote this perfectly and had me on the edge of my seat.