This book was so good I regretted finishing it. It's really a fun and funny read, with lots of twists and turns along the way. It seems that nobody ever tells the whole truth, which is to be expected since they're all basically con men and women.

I really like the dry humor of Ross Thomas. It's pretty constant, both in the dialog and the descriptions. The characters all seem to understand each other even without saying anything specific, probably because they all think alike; they all want the money, however they can get it.

In this story, a government terrorism expert gets fired, and offered a job that only he can do, which is to pay an old friend, now a Filipino terrorist, 5 million dollars to leave the Philippines. For this, he will get paid $500,000, a high price because he's a single source for the job. He needs help, and gets directed to a guy named Overby, who is called Otherguy because it's always the other guy that did it. But Overby is supposedly just the go-between, because he know how to find our heroes, Wu and Durant, who have been friends since they were kids in an orphanage. They are probably the only two people who are honest with each other.

The story is about how these and a few others go about trying to get the 5 million that they are supposed to give to the Filipino terrorist. We're never sure of the plan, and I'm not sure if anyone else is sure, either, except that everything seems to go according to plans - or at least, they don't seem surprised by most of the outcomes.

The only negative I can think of is that there is only one more book in this series. Fortunately, there are lots of other books by Ross Thomas, and I hope to read them all. ( )

Durant, Wu and "Otherguy" score 5 million in post Marcos Philippines

An ex-soldier is hired to bribe a guerrilla fighter whom he had fought beside during world war 2. Rather than pay the bribe he decides to form a team of con men and attempt to swindle the 5 million dollars for himself.

The story has its share of mystery and twists that keeps your interest and the pages turning. ( )

Booth Stallings, a terrorism expert, is suddenly and unceremoniously fired from his job. Almost immediatley he is approached by an "arranger" that offers him the job of delivering 5 million dollars to a rebel fighter in the Phillipines. Stallings has been chosen for the job because the rebel fighter does not trust the people who are offering to pay him the $5 million "to retire" and choses Booth to bring the money to him because they fought together in WWII. And certainly the rebel fighter is right not to trust the people who are offering to pay him off so he will retire but he should not have trusted Booth either. Booth immediately begins plotting to find a way of not giving any of the money to the rebel fighter. He contacts Otherguy Overby (so named because he is able to always blame the "other guy" when things go wrong in one of his schemes) who assembles a team to con both the people giving the money to the rebel fighter as well as the rebel fighter himself.

Otherguy Overby contacts Wu and Durant and the ride begins. The story is a Sting-like book where everyone on the team may also be working to con the rest of the team and walk off with more of the $5 million than they agreed to; the same may also be true with the guerilla group as well. The book is extremely well written and the reader will have trouble keeping up at times with all the complications that arise. The one thing that is also true though is that in the movie The Sting we got to know the characters that Paul Newman and Robert Redford played well enough to be able to identify with them. In Out On The Rim, the author, Ross Thomas, doesn't do a lot of character development with any of the main characters. The characters are well defined and clearly identified, but character development is sacrificed so the author can keep everyone's motives and allegiances murky and uncertain. This helps the plot but the reader is left with much less of a rooting interest in the outcome. ( )

I was so excited to see another book with Wu and Durant. I was a little disappointed though. This one didn’t seem to crackle and spark like The Chinaman’s Chance did. Sure, it was good and had plenty of action, double crosses, thefts and murders, but it lacked spontaneity somehow. Wu and Durant seemed less playful and a lot more serious this time around. They also seemed less in control, too.

In the end, Georgia Blue makes a play for the money. Both she and Stallings have to be present for the money to be drawn out of the bank. Stallings tries a switch, but she sees right through it and forces him to give her the real checks. She almost makes if but for Durant. Because she killed his girlfriend, he’s out for blood. The money also had something to do with it.

Everyone who was supposed to get money (according to Artie) got theirs – except for Georgia Blue. Her share went to the sister of the guerilla who was killed so he wouldn’t get the whole $5 million.

For a while there, I thought that Otherguy really would double-cross Artie and Durant. He really laid it on thick. Good thing he didn’t. In the end, Stallings decides exactly what he wants to be now that he is all grown up and he goes to find Otherguy. ( )