THE ACCOUNTING

Twenty-five years after three teenagers swiped over $1 million from their neighborhood drug dealer, it’s suddenly payback time.

Jonathon Willing hasn’t been close to his friends Augie and Ben for a long time. But the three phone each other every Tuesday, mostly to make sure they’re all still alive. One Tuesday, Augie doesn’t answer his phone, and Jon flies out to Vegas to find out why not. It’s the best of all possible reasons, of course, and it would probably spell imminent danger even if Jon weren’t dumb enough to answer Augie’s telephone while he’s standing over the corpse. From that moment on, the life Jon’s constructed for himself—his business as a lately unemployed mortgage broker, his upscale tract house in a Virginia suburb, his nodding acquaintance with his wife, Caitlin, and his children Shelby and Eric—is over, and he’s a man on the run. The precautions Jon takes to prevent Clevenger, the man who killed Augie, from tracing him back home prove pitifully inadequate, and his 1,000-mile lead over his dogged pursuer keeps getting slimmer and slimmer. This is exciting stuff, but it would be even more exciting if this stand-alone from the creator of Philadelphia lawyer Victor Carl (A Killer’s Kiss, 2007, etc.) didn’t feel the need to provide a long flashback reviewing the six years that led up to Augie, Ben and Jon’s initial harebrained scheme and if everyone Jon asked for help, from Jon’s ex-girlfriend to the grandfather from whom he’s long been estranged to the neighborhood kid whose scary brother the trio first ripped off, weren’t so eager to tell the story of his or her life.

Just in case you miss the point on your own, Jon caps his wild tale with a homily about how the whole country is living on borrowed money, just like him, and the reckoning looms for us all. Makes you think.