This is a truly dark comedy mystery set on Christmas Eve in Wichita, Kansas. It follows Charlie Arglist, a crooked lawyer who embezzles from his mob boss and plans to leave town with the money. As the night unfolds, Charlie navigates a series of complications, betrayals and violence that reveal the dark and darkly humorous underbelly of his life. This book is full of surprises, not the least of which is the final one. I had a very good time reading it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“He went back to the living room and sat down. He picked the .22 back up and waited. He\u2019d almost allowed his giddy relief at getting the money back and the inconceivably beautiful prospect of a life with a spectacular, unattainable woman to cloud his good judgment. Renata had been in on it with Vic, and she\u2019d most likely called the cops to report the burglary at Bonnie\u2019s house. He had more than a quarter of a million dollars in a satchel, and he\u2019d nearly traded it for a blow job that he wouldn\u2019t have lived to see the end of.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is a truly dark comedy mystery set on Christmas Eve in Wichita, Kansas. It follows Charlie Arglist, a crooked lawyer who embezzles from his mob boss and plans to leave town with the money. As the night unfolds, Charlie navigates a series of complications, betrayals and violence that reveal the dark and darkly humorous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17816,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[270],"tags":[86,59,143],"class_list":["post-17814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-2025","tag-betrayal","tag-crime","tag-money"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/clay-leconey-UkOEO-cjbY0-unsplash-scaled-e1737052498356.jpg?fit=2560%2C1506&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17814"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17820,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17814\/revisions\/17820"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}