Lucky Tom by Federico Muchnik

A crime thriller that feels ripped from the crises of today’s headlines, Lucky Tom by Federico Muchnik is a fast-moving and gritty peek into the streets.

The drug market in Boston is filling up with fentanyl, and bodies are beginning to drop on college campuses, bringing in Detective Del Vecchio to sniff out the murderous link in the chain. Lamont is a misguided young kid grief-stricken over his drug-sharing role in his own stepsister’s death. Tom is just an Uber driver who wants to make some extra cash dropping off deliveries for a slick French criminal named Francois Laax. Their lives collide for an intricate dive into the messy web of drug dealing and desperation in modern-day America, with characters at every turn that readers may recognize, or even relate to.

The brutal realities of the drug trade in America are rarely laid bare with such straightforward language and real-world consequences, but the execution of the story itself is lacking, with stilted conversations and sterile moments of intimacy to plot holes and multiple scenes where readers are forced to significantly suspend their disbelief. Additionally, the editing is far from perfect, with repeated or missing words, grammatical mistakes, confusion within the omnipresent narration, and formatting errors.

Despite these stylistic slips, the tangled plot moves through various underworlds with confidence, as well as the maddening cage of the criminal justice system, making this novella a timely, character-driven drama that hits hard.