Play Dirty

After five years in prison Griff Burkett – a former American football star – is released. And gets an unusual, but very lucrative, job offer from millionaire Foster Speakman: he should impregnate his wife Laura. Griff needs the money, and so he accepts the job. After a few attempts he is successful and Laura is pregnant. For this reason Foster invites Griff to his mansion to receive the promised money. But the meeting escalates: Foster gets killed and Griff, together with Foster's butler, disappears. Tasked with the murder investigation is officer Rodarte, Griff's worst enemy. While he failed in provoking Griff to violate his probation terms, he sees this murder investigation as a good opportunity to bring Griff back to prison...

I enjoyed Play Dirty, it's a good and easy read with an interesting main character: Griff Burkett. However, the plot feels too constructed and unrealistic. And I didn't understand why Griff calls his enemy Rodarte, sharing an important address with him...

Quotes from the book

His face looked like it had been hacked out of oak with a chain saw, by a carver too impatient to smooth out the rough edges.

"What do I do to earn my hundred thousand dollars?" - "Make my wife pregnant."

"You doubt my sanity?" - "And then some." - "Why?" - "Well, for starters, I'm not wearing a sign that says sperm bank." Speakman smiled. "Not the kind of job you thought I'd be offering, huh?"

Running the airline wasn't as much fun as it used to be. Key personnel were so good at their jobs, they could do them without his supervision. From a management standpoint, it was gratifying to know he'd made wise choices in hiring them. But their reliability made him superfluous.

Griff gaped at him as if he'd said that he could have a week on a desert island with every Playmate of the Month for the past year, that they were all nymphomaniacs with the hots for him, and that no clothes were allowed.

"Burkett doesn't have friends, only people he uses then shits on."

He'd handcuffed each of them behind their backs, also linking the pairs of handcuffs together, then put duct tape over their mouths. Even when they regained consciousness, they'd make an awkward, mute, four-legged animal that would have trouble getting out of the stairwell and raising an alarm.