Quinn’s Dilemma: Trapped Between The Justice Dept., The Mob and a Notorious Union Brings Intrigue, Violence and Murder
by ReadersMagnet | May 2, 2024 | Book Review | 0 Comments
Here’s a common plotline: A successful man, through dramatic grit and determination, makes it to the top. He then is disillusioned and now dreams of a simpler life towards the end.
Now, take that plot and then have the ending part as the beginning.
If you think that’s quite a twist, then that’s not even the half of it. What if the so-called simpler life is actually something straight out of a crime thriller?
All of that is the premise of Bruce N. Ball’s recently published novel Quinn’s Dilemma: Trapped Between The Justice Dept., The Mob and a Notorious Union Brings Intrigue, Violence and Murder. This book is the winner of RMazing Grand Bonanza Year 2 – Level 2.
The novel blends various ideas from finance dramas as well as mafia stories along with Ball’s own experience working 30 years as an investment manager. One could even guess that a lot of the events mirrors some of his more intense experiences on the job. In any case, read on to see how it all comes together.
A Dream of Simple Life Gone Bad, Very Bad
The story is told from the perspective of the titular Parker Quinn. It starts with Quinn grimly contemplating the great anxiety and dissatisfaction with his Wall Street executive life. Despite all its accompanying wealth and privilege, the seventeen hard-fought years in the rat race have brought him no peace. (The messy divorce that happened along the way didn’t help either.)
He wanted out, and he wanted it soon. Incidentally, he finds his escape with the help of a long-time rival who sets him up to work for a labor union in a much smaller town far away from the cold city.
Little did he know that this is exactly where his real troubles begin.
Three years into his new life, Quinn learned all too well that his union associates were deeply entrenched with the mob. By then, as with any criminal involvement, it was too late for him to bail.
The union in question isn’t named, at least from the start. However, it doesn’t take long for readers to learn the name of its head: the psychotic Renato Costa.
During the early parts of the story, Quinn is fortunate enough to not deal with Renato personally. Instead, he enjoys the much better company of his Sicilian friend Nicky Tagliano as well as Anthony Traffaro, a more level-headed member of Renato’s inner circle.
That didn’t spare Quinn from hearing the stories, though, and as he hears more of them from his new friends, it’s made very clear that one wrong move could send him on an extensive tour of the local river bottom.
Things then turn completely on their head when an equally maniacal federal prosecutor decides to make Renato’s union his next mob-busting target. And as the war between the feds and the mafia loom, the pile of dilemmas on Quinn’s grows ever higher.
Sharing Glimpses Into Real-Life Labor Racketeering
Throughout Bruce Ball’s decades as an investment manager, he has personally met all sorts of real people that he synthesized into the characters of his book. The involvement of the mafia with several trade unions has long been a documented phenomenon in the study of crime, but Ball has undoubtedly glimpsed this involvement firsthand.
His time handling the pension funds for these unions has also led him into contact with the FBI on more than one occasion. And while times have changed, he shows how the stories inspired by such incidents are still thrilling, entertaining reads.
That aside, Ball also hopes that his mafia union novel serves a bit like a cautionary tale and interesting counter-narrative to the usual Rich Guy Wants Simpler Life trope. Sometimes, the trappings of a quieter town are but a mask for the same stress and anxiety that people often associate with high-rise city life.
Quinn’s Dilemma: Trapped Between The Justice Dept., The Mob and a Notorious Union Brings Intrigue, Violence and Murder is available onAmazon, Barnes & Noble, and ReadersMagnet Bookstore.
Learn more about Bruce and his works by visiting his website at https://www.bruceballquinnsdilemma.com/.
