The Albuquerque Turkey

The Albuquerque Turkey by John Vorhaus, 2011. 272 pages. Published by Crown Publishing Group. Source: for review from PR by the Book.

Master con artist Radar Hoverlander is getting out of the life…unless his old man drags him back in. After their last big con netted them a nice chunk of change, Radar Hoverlander and his grifter girlfriend, Allie Quinn, have vowed to go straight. But Radar’s fragile commitment to clean living is put to the test when an oddly hefty lady in red shows up and stalks him through the streets of Santa Fe. Except that’s no lady—it’s Radar’s dad, Woody Hoverlander, a world class con artist in his own right.
Radar correctly figures if his dad is in drag, he must be in trouble. Woody is on the lam, with a Vegas hard guy after him and a large debt to clear. To help him, Radar must break his vow to leave cons behind—and risk losing Allie, who is determined to protect their nest egg and steer clear of bad influences...

 First Sentence:

It started with a dog, a biggish one loping down the sidewalk with that weird canter some dogs have, the front legs syncopating and the rear legs slewing sideways in tandem.

The Albuquerque Turkey was nothing like I thought it was going to be. When I first heard about it I thought that it would have a caper-like feel, like the Ocean's 11 movies and that it was going to be funny. I was sorely mistaken. It was either just not funny or the humor was such that it just didn't ring humorous to me (which is highly possible since I don't have the best sense of humor).

The Albuquerque Turkey had a lot of potential to be a great read, and it probably would have been a lot better had the story not taken so long to pick up and get going. I felt that the author could have perhaps done a little more showing and a lot less telling when it come to the plot because it felt like he was forever (to use a word from the book) bafflegab around the story.

Of the four characters that were mentioned the most, Radar, Vic, Allie, and Woody (Radar’s dad), I never really felt much of anything for them. To me they came across as a way to relay the story, nothing to get attached to. Maybe that’s how they were supposed to be, I don’t know. *shrugs*

The one thing I did like about the The Albuquerque Turkey was the totally cute dog, Boy (not a very original name), that Radar rescued in the beginning of the book. He was such a sweetheart.
  Okay, there is one other thing that I did like about this book and which kept me reading it, and that would have to be that I just had to know if they were going to be able to pull off their scheme and come out on top. I felt that Mr. Vorhaus did a very nice job of pulling together the various strings to the con, and I enjoyed how it was layered throughout the book.  

What really made The Albuquerque Turkey hard to get into was the author’s excessive use of slang. Yes, the book was about grifters and them plying their trade, but I feel that the book could've benefited from less of the lingo because it tended to muddy the flow of the story as you tried to decipher what on earth they were talking about. At the very least a lexicon or glossary would have been helpful.
   As for content, there was entirely too MUCH swearing, so much so that my poor mind was reeling from the foul language in which the characters talked; there was also much page skipping due to the characters sleeping with each other.

Final Verdict: The Albuquerque Turkey didn't quite live up to my expectations.

The Albuquerque Turkey earns 3 out of 5 pineapples.