Marjorie's World of Books

I’ve been looking forward to the new TV show, “Good Behavior”, starring Michelle Dockery, which will premiere on TNT on November 15, 2016. So I was quite excited to be reading Blake Crouch’s three novellas that comprise his work centering on the character, Letty Dobesh.  Also, this is the tie-in to the TV show and has photos of the cast at work and also the author’s notes about each of the stories and how they were incorporated into the TV show.

Letty Dobesh is out of prison and is back to being a thief and con-woman. She’s an alcoholic and a drug addict.  The only way she seems to be able to keep from the alcohol and drugs is to have the excitement of a heist going on.  There are three novellas about Letty.  The first is “The Pain of Others” which is my favorite of the three and which is apparently going to be included in the first season of the TV show.  That one is about Letty’s intervention with a hitman in doing his job.  The second, “Sunset Key”, involves Letty’s attempt to rob a man who is being sent to prison the next day for fraud.  The longest of the three novellas is “Grab”, which is about a casino heist.

From the advertisements I’ve seen of the upcoming TV show and from my reading of other books by this author, I expected to have sympathy for Lettie. That wasn’t the case at all.  I had a hard time connecting with her or sympathizing with her life.  She has a 6-year-old son who she has lost custody of and throughout the books, she longs to set things right with him and become the mother he needs.  However, it just seems that her love of the excitement of thievery overcomes her maternal instincts so I had a hard time liking her.  When things don’t go well for her, she feels she has two choices – do a heist or do drugs.  I just hope that Michelle Dockery can instill some sympathy into this character on the TV screen because these stories didn’t for me, though other readers have said that they did have sympathy for her. 

As always, the author has written very entertaining stories, which are exciting and suspenseful, with quite a few surprise twists. It was a fun read, especially in light of the upcoming TV show.

This book was given to me by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.