From Barnes & Noble
An intense thunderbolt of murder, corruption, sex, and betrayal, As Catch Can will leave you stunned and begging for more. In 1971, Jack "Keeper" Marconi (now warden of Green Haven maximum-security prison) survived the brutal Attica prison riots. Just a year ago, Keeper's devoted wife was killed in a hit-and-run auto accident. What's left is the shell of a man -- the perfect target to frame for murder.
Kirkus Reviews
A melodramatic but satisfying by-the-numbers debut thriller pits a brooding, middle-aged New York prison warden on the trail of an escaped murderer. Freelancer Zandri, who had planned at first on writing a nonfiction book about a real-life prison warden, offers instead this fictionalized treatment that turns prison blues trenchcoat gray. The conveniently widowed, whiskey-guzzling Jack "Keeper" Marconi, who would otherwise while away the hours pushing paper in his shabby office at Green Haven Prison, a maximum-security facility near Albany, leaves his office to crack a conspiracy that helped cop-killer Eduard Vasquez flee Marconi's collar. Soon Marconi is dodging bullets, consorting with fast women, and mixing himself up in a scam that exposes him to a frame-up for drug-smuggling. All of that- plus conniving TV news reporter Cassandra Wolf; a sordid amateur porn video; quietly lethal mafiosi; and shady political maneuvering by Marconi's boss, Washington Pelton-would be enough to sustain five thrillers. Even so, Zandri's pile-driver plotting, indulgence in gratuitously gross accounts of prison life, and fondness for whiz-bang prose (a sports utility vehicle moves "like a bullet shot out of the twilight") wear thin. He cleverly uses the 1971 Attica prison riots as a trial by fire for Marconi and others who inhabit a balefully hypocritical world that can erupt instantly. Justice, as Marconi inevitably administers it, is not so much a payback for violations of civil order but, rather, an attempt to heal wounds. Overwrought, but redeemed by a lonely hero with an unusual perspective on human depravity. (Author tour) .
