Counterfeit and the Real Thing

Counterfeit Road [by] Kirk Russell

[Sutton, Eng.] Severn House [2012]

978-0-7278-8145-8; $28.95

22 years to the day, a videotape of an unsolved 1989 murder – the murder of former Secret Service agent Alan Krueger – arrives for the San Francisco Homicide detail, and falls into Homicide Inspector Ben Raveneau’s proverbial lap.  What’s more:  back then the 61 $100 bills in the victim’s pocket were considered legitimate; but now the Secret Service takes another look and calls them counterfeit. What is going on?

There also seems to be a link to the present, which no one wants to talk about.  Ben studies the video.  He pores over the old case files.  He hunts for the couple who found the body.  He enlists the help of a retired homicide inspector.  Then a young man shows up, saying that he’s the son of the man whose name was in Alan Krueger’s pants pocket.  He has photographs, which he brings along for Raveneau to see.  A photo tech he knows tells Raveneau that the pictures were taken in Hawaii, and names the places. There are pictures of the young man’s father, Alan Krueger, and two others with whom he saw service in Vietnam.

Then, there is a shooting in a warehouse.  A truck had just delivered plywood and driven off.  Then a shooter killed three of the workers and wounded another, who died on the way to the hospital.  The boss was out of the office at the time.  The saws were still running at the little cabinet shop when the cops got there.  Raveneau went after the trucker, but got no real answers.

When he went back to the shop, Raveneau inspected the palette of plywood and discovered it was faked. Inside hollowed-out parts of the plywood there were things which turned out to be bomb casings.  Unfortunately, they try to follow them when they are trucked away, but they lose track of the truck, so they still have no answers, but lots more questions.

Raveneau goes to Hawaii, to the house owned by Jim Franks, the father of the young man with the photos in San Francisco.  It looks like he will find answers there, but the house is no longer lived in.  He is shot at, and gets to meet another son of Jim Franks, and then his friend Tom Casey.  Casey was one of Krueger’s Vietnam buddies.

Eventually Raveneau gets to tie all of the loose ends together.  There is a very large conspiracy, which includes the money found on Krueger – so-called “supernotes” – extraordinarily good counterfeit U.S. currency, which predated the known supernotes, as well as the bomb casings, and this small circle of Vietnam vets.  Not to mention Feds of different kinds, and people who were not who they said they were, but turn out to be threatening, with pieces of the past hanging about them.  It is quite a relief for Raveneau to finally get back to his ordinary life, and the time to celebrate his girlfriend’s new bar to the utmost.  A great thriller – highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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Library book.