Product Description

Rob ByrnesStraight Lies From award-winning author Rob Byrnes comes a wickedly entertaining caper involving red-hot men, cold hard cash, and deliciously dirty deeds-

Two Partners In Crime

Grant and Chase are a fun-loving pair of small-time hus

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #112073 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780758228574
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
A pair of petty crooks think they've lucked into the ultimate blackmail material in Byrnes's unwieldy latest. Chase LaMarca and Grant Lambert get information that gay icon Romeo Romero is actually straight, but their incompetent associate loses the incriminating videotape in a cab. Before LaMarca and Lambert can retrieve the tape, it falls into the hands of tabloid reporter Ian Hadley, who has blackmail on his mind, too. The gaggle go to extremes (and the Hamptons) to get what they want in this comedy of errors, and while the characters are charmingly inept, the coincidences that drive the plot are woefully absurd, and the setting is threadbare window dressing. The competing capers have some fun moments, but the plotting leaves much to be desired. (Apr.)
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From Booklist
In this caper heist, Byrnes (When the Stars Come Out, 2006) comes up with obstacles likely and improbable as Grant and his longtime lover, Chase, try to steal a compromising videotape of gay film legend Romeo Romero (who’s been out and proud for decades) making hot love in his hot tub to a hot, buxom blond. The actor’s legions of gay fans would reel from the revelation of their Romeo’s closeted heterosexuality, so blackmail’s the scheme. As the two small-time con men try to claw their way up the crime ladder, they add an assortment of larcenous misfits to their gang until it resembles a hilarious bad-dream team. They then fail to secure the tape, so decide to re-create the sex scenario. Of course, everything that can go wrong does, making all the scheming and strategizing that somewhat slow the action resolve into a laugh-out-loud endgame farce with definite switch-hit appeal. --Whitney Scott

Customer Reviews

Partners in crime... and not only
Can an openly gay man be outed? Well, he can if he is only pretending to be gay in order to keep the remnants of his acting career alive while actually he has a soft spot for girls with big bosoms. When Romeo Romero is caught on tape with such a girl by one of his guests, and Grant Lambert and Chase La Marca hear about the fact and the existence of the tape (the whereabouts thereof are currently uknown) the adventure begins.
Grant and Chase are partners in more ways than one - they live together and break the law together. Their specialty are gentlemen with a taste for very young girls. They find their victims on the Internet and before the gentlemen know what is going on, they lose their cars and credit cards. Grant and Chase are small-time crooks who hope for a big break and blackmailing Romeo Romero seems to be a chance for such a break. But the cookie turns out to be a tough one so they will have to work very hard and ask all their friends to help to get to Romero's money.
Byrnes succeeds once again - the novel has a good pace, the characters are well drawn, the story is (almost) probable. This is not another candidate for the Pulitzer prize but a very good candidate for your beach/pool reading during summer holidays. It took my copy to Cyprus and I did not regret it.

Funny New Read!
Rob Byrnes has done it again. "Straight Lies" is a hilarious adventure introducing us to con-men Chas and Grant and well as re-introducing a few previous characters we have met in Byrnes other books!

Great laughs and hilarity ensues when Chas and Grant plan the biggest caper of their "careers."

A great read! I look forward to more adventures of this mad-cap gang!

Mad Cap Fun
'Straight Lies' is a refreshingly fun and mad-cap adventure that brings to mind Ocean's 11 and Janet Evanovich, only with a pair of morally flexible gay protagonists named Chase and Grant, a lesbian real-estate agent and her girlfriend, an alcoholic driver, and the funniest boy-toys I've had the pleasure of reading since, well, 'Trust Fund Boys.'

It all begins when our two con-men protagonists realize that there's a tape out there with the famous gay star Romeo Romero gettin' it on in his hot-tub... with a woman. Since the man's career was built on his brave "coming out" this offers a blackmail situation, and Chase and Grant aren't going to turn it down.

Which is when the tape goes missing, a sleazy tabloid writer, an ex-cop, and even Tori Spelling get throw into the mix. The plans - and new plans - and improvisations when the plans don't work - fly fast and furious, and the real joy is in the collision of these clever characters as they try to make something stick long enough to walk with the payoff.

Byrnes is even nice enough to drop some gentle cameos in there for fans of his earlier books to chortle over.

By now, you'd think I would have learned that when cracking a Rob Byrnes novel, I should make sure to seclude myself somewhere first, so that when - inevitably - I let loose with barking laughs, I'm not making other people nervous. I didn't learn, and to the passengers of the #95 bus, the people in the food court last Tuesday, and my husband (who was trying to sleep), I apologize. But you really should go buy a copy.

Well, maybe not my husband. He can borrow mine.