Fingerprints of Armless Mike — Thomas William Simpson

Fingerprints of Armless Mike (Originally published as The Fingerprints of Armless Mike by Warner Books October 1996) So what is this book with the strange title? And who's Mike? Is he really armless? Is this some kind of gruesome tale? Horror? Sci-fi? Hardly. The Fingerprints of Armless Mike is Thomas William Simpson's amusing, fast moving romp about love, lust, greed, and grand larceny. He was a rolling stone, cool and easy. She was pure Miss Porter, proper and maybe a tad… snooty. But somehow, up in the Prosperous, Monied Hills of Affluent NJ, the two came together. Kissed and laughed and fell in love. But now he's robbed her mother blind and disappeared into the night. What everyone wants to know: did he do it for true love or did he do it for the money? Some people know him as Mike Standish, others as Mike Standowski. But right now no one knows where is he and only a few know why he has suddenly vanished. His lovely young wife, Sarah Louise Browne, knows. His rich, hard-hearted mother-in-law, “Iron Kate,” knows. So does Mike's best buddy, Graham Cramer, who wishes he'd never introduced Mike to Sarah. The trouble starts when Mike is forced to live under his mother-in-law's roof and prying eyes. Iron Kate will not let Mike forget for a second he was born on the wrong side of the tracks. So finally, after one too many slurs, Mike puts a very simple plan into motion. He backs a rental truck up to the back door of Kate's hilltop mansion and fills it with her most valuable antiques. Too bad Mike leaves his fingerprints behind. Now on the lam in the Bahamas, Mike is forced to take a hard look at his life and his relationship with the woman he loves and has now betrayed. As Mike desperately tries to find a way out of the mess he's created, and as his pursuers close in, an epic storm descends upon the islands. And in the eye of Hurricane Bertha, the man who has never really been entirely honest about anything in his life, may finally discover the truth… and a terrible way out of his predicament. If he survives the onslaught. A novel that combines John Irving's quirky sense of humor, T. Coraghessan Boyle's outlandish sense of adventure, and Stephen Birmingham's razor sharp insights into the American Monied Class, The Fingerprints of Armless Mike proves once again why Thomas William Simpson has been called one of the most creative and captivating storytellers of our time.