Is a guy who does bad things to bad people a bad guy? Does it make any difference if he’s carrying an NYPD detective’s badge? Ben Sanders’ new book, The Stakes, pitches veteran NYPD detective, Miles Keller, under internal investigation after a dodgy shooting, against taciturn, behatted hitman Bobby Deen, whose brother, Jack, just happened to be Keller’s victim.
Keller has been building up an illicit nest egg by robbing rich criminals while they are in the 
process of ripping off someone else. He’s even got an agent to line up the lucrative freelance jobs for him. Throw into the mix beautiful bad girl Nina Stone, with whom Keller once had a fling and whose husband has enlisted Deen to bring her home to daddy, and you know things are not going to end well. For someone. Well, for a lot of people actually.
Keller and Deen are worthy adversaries, two sides of the same coin, and in Stone, and Lucy, Keller’s current love (and former confidential informant) Sanders has created too fabulous smart and ferocious women. Even if one is a psychopath. Sanders’ plot zips along with sudden sharp deviations each time the reader is beginning to relax amidst the mayhem. Add snappy dialogue chockfull of wise guy cracks, a body count worthy of a small war and you’ve got a suspenseful, all action adventure.
Sanders is a New Zealand crime writer whose previous books include the Auckland Trilogy: The Fallen, By Any Means and Only the Dead. His other books are Marshall’s Law and the best-selling American Blood released in 2015. The Stakes is published by Allen&Unwin.
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