Book Review: Patrick Hoffman's "Friends Helping Friends"

Plus: Some light housekeeping

Hello, Callers. Thanks for being here.

As we get ready to publish our first piece of original crime fiction on June 11, we’ll also be trying out some new features, like today’s book review post. If you’d like to see more of this kind of thing (or less), please let me know in the comments.

Before we dive into Patrick Hoffman’s Friends Helping Friends, a little housekeeping—Cold Caller will be closing submissions July 1 while we catch up on the stories in our queue. I expect we won’t reopen until winter, so if you’ve got something you’d like to send us please do it by June 30!

After July 1, we’ll still be open for interview pitches. If you have a book or project you think would be of interest to our readers, drop us an email with the subject line “INTERVIEW QUERY” along with a few details about yourself, your project, and why it’s a good fit.

Thanks for reading, and thank you for making Cold Caller possible.

[Editor’s Note: The following book review contains spoilers for Friends Helping Friends by Patrick Hoffman]

Bunny Simpson, the twenty-something protagonist of Patrick Hoffman’s Friends Helping Friends, is a nice guy. He’s kind to his Uncle Rayton, a good friend to his pal Jerry LeClair, and a good employee to T-Ma, his boss at the cigarette store. He’s also not bad to look at, as Uncle Rayton reminds him early on in the book:

“I know you, Bunny, you can make something of yourself.”

“I appreciate that,” said the younger man.

“You got a handsome face,” said Rayton. “You could end up being a CEO with a face like that.”

“I got these scars, though, too,” said Bunny, touching his jaw.

“They add to the whole thing. Real talk, Bunny, you could go a long way with that face.”

Maybe Rayton makes such a big deal of Bunny’s good looks because the kid is kind of dim. Unmoored, uncertain, and easily distracted, Bunny doesn’t seem to possess the brains necessary to infiltrate a white supremacist gang. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have much of a choice.

That’s because Bunny has been arrested for assaulting the Honorable Tad P. Mangan, a civil judge in Denver’s district court. Bunny was hired by his best friend Jerry LeClair, who in turn was hired by Tad’s ex-wife, Helen McCalla. Helen is unmoored in her own right: After finding out Tad’s new wife is pregnant, her anger and jealousy drives her to exact some small measure of vengeance.

Jerry and Bunny take the job, but the boys botch it so badly they’re both quickly caught. While Jerry tries to navigate his way through the justice system, Bunny is offered a deal. See, it turns out Bunny’s Uncle Willard—his mother’s brother—is now the leader of a white supremacist gang the ATF badly wants to take down. If Bunny agrees to cooperate, they’ll commute his 12-year prison sentence. Of course Bunny takes the deal.

What follows, though, is neither Donnie Brasco nor The Departed. As an undercover agent, Bunny does what he’s told, but the notes he takes aren’t especially helpful to his two ATF handlers, agents Howley and Gana. Hoffman, as author, gives us an insider’s view of the white supremacist gang, but only enough to understand the basics of what’s going on. Most of the time the reader, just like Bunny, is left to wonder that the group wants to accomplish, even as ominous signs cloud the horizon.

The young men had been shooting their guns again, and running drills that Bunny couldn’t see, but he heard them yelling on and off all day long. “What are they training for?”

“Training?” Willard stopped walking. He turned and looked at bunny with anger in his eyes. For a moment, Bunny was transported back to his youth, and he felt almost frozen in fear. Then Willard’s face softened a little. “There’s a war coming,” he said. “You know that, right? If we’re not prepared for it, we’re gonna get run off this land. Lose our country. It’s happening. It’s already started.”

Bunny’s attempts to warn the ATF agents that something bad is about to happen fall on deaf ears. Agents Howley and Gana, with increasing violence, make it clear they’re not interested in Bunny’s concerns. They need something concrete, like the little black notebook Uncle Willard keeps secure in his safe. What’s it contain? Bunny’s left clueless. His job—whether for Uncle Willard or Agents Howley and Gana—is not to ask questions, it’s to do as he’s told.

Friends Helping Friends is a slow burn of a crime novel. The walls are closing in on Bunny from page one, but they’re not moving quickly; we have time for detours and digressions, including the wonderful dialogue and characterization that makes Bunny and Jerry so much fun to spend time with.

Here’s an example from near the end of the novel. Bunny and Jerry are on the run, fleeing the white supremacist gang and the ATF without any idea what they’ll do next. Their lives under threat, here’s the plan they come up with:

“We should’ve kept a little bit of that crank for the drive,” said Bunny.

“Nah,” said Jerry. “It’s time to clean up.”

“You’re right again,” said Bunny, slapping his own leg. “It’s time to clean up.”

“We gotta live like mercenaries now.”

“I’d like to go vegan,” said Bunny.

“Shit, me too,” said Jerry. “Let’s do that. I wanna get in shape, too. I don’t need to lift weights, but I’d at least like to be able to run a mile in under seven point five minutes.”

“Yeah, we gotta get our beach bodies.”

“It takes discipline, though.”

“That’s true,” said Bunny. “It does.”

I recognize these guys. Hell, I’m friends with these guys, and Hoffman captures their characters perfectly. But they aren’t just played for laughs. At the most surprising moments, there is a deep tenderness that emerges between Jerry and Bunny, Bunny and Rayton, Jerry and Helen, and others as they try to navigate the events of the novel for better or worse.

Sometimes that’s not shown through the dialogue. Sometimes it shows up in small, tender moments like this:

Jerry sat there for a second, then looked up at Bunny. “Eight ninety-five, dude,” he said. “We’re fucking rich, man. Like beyond dreams kind of rich.” Then he bent over and started crying into the crook of his arm. He didn’t even know why he was crying. The tears kept coming. Bunny scooted over to his friend and rubbed his back.

Friends Helping Friends has its share of violence and ugliness, but moments like that one are the beating heart of this book. Hoffman has written a touching, at times surprisingly earnest crime novel about the trouble we get ourselves into and the friends who help bail us out again.