Kyle Royce is the kind of young, handsome, fabulously wealthy New Yorker the tabloids have a field day with. A successful currency trader, he attends all the right charity events, arriving in one of his many exotic cars with an exquisite woman on his arm, and enough charm and humor to entertain even the most bored socialite at his table.
But behind the public persona, Royce leads a very different life. Through his shadowy organization, The Foundation, he and his hand-picked team of former government officials, detectives, and technology experts, have a singular goal: to find the missing, by any means legal . . . or otherwise.
When approached by a woman desperate to track down her brother who disappeared almost two decades ago during the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, Royce and The Foundation find themselves dodging foreign agents, the NYPD, the NSA, and even the F.B.I., as the search carries them round the world to a shocking conclusion.
Book Reviews.
Inkshares Review:
The title for this novel came from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: To do a great right, do a little wrong. I liked the idea of someone with the resources and ability skirting the law to actually get things done; find missing people even after the authorities have given up. In this first book, the main character, Kyle Royce, who has his own demons to grapple with, gets into a little more trouble than he expected, with both the FBI and foreign agents after him. I envision this a continuing series with Royce and his cohorts solving mysteries and pissing off governments around the world.
KIRKUS Review:
A random recent photo of a man presumed dead following the 9/11 attack spurs an investigative team to try to determine the truth about his disappearance–by any means possible.
Kyle Royce lives a double life in the manner of Bruce Wayne. He is the frontman for his family’s fabulously successful currency trading firm and nonprofit Royce Foundation. But his actual work is “cloak and dagger stuff,” tackling missing person cases “no one else can solve.” One such endeavor–which kicks off the novel in high gear–is rescuing a man’s son who had been kidnapped by a powerful Brazilian family. Royce and his team’s newest case, Phillip Peterson, formerly worked in fraud and security for a credit card company with offices in the World Trade Center. Was he killed in the terrorist attack, or is something more sinister afoot? Royce reassures Peterson’s sister that he and his “devoted staff with some unique skills and connections” will get results. “Our methods are sometimes unorthodox and, at times, controversial,” he admits. Or, in the words of Shakespeare, “To do a great right, do a little wrong.” But the hunters become the prey as their investigation uncovers the credit card company’s questionable doings. “There are some very powerful people and institutions that will not want the world to know this information,” Royce is warned at one point. Meanwhile, the Brazilians are stepping up pressure to retrieve the boy that Royce reunited with his father. But Royce has a simple lesson: “If you fuck with me, you will lose.” That kind of bravado makes the hero an enjoyable figure to follow around the world. He deserves future adventures that will hopefully further flesh out his colleagues. Only two, his best friend and former NFL player, Cleat Williams, and Jennifer Parks-Hudson, an investigator with whom Royce may have more than a professional interest, get major page time. A fun diversion with a bracing hero and sequel potential.
OnlineBookClub Review:
The title of Do A Little Wrong comes from Shakespeare’s The Merchant Of Venice “To do a great right, do a little wrong.”
After losing his parents at a young age, Kyle Royce has dedicated his life to finding the missing and the lost, those who cannot be found by conventional means. Funding his secretive Royce Foundation from the billion-dollar currency trading firm founded by his uncle, he lives a double life. Outwardly, he’s the epitome of the wealthy playboy, dating a procession of swimsuit models and driving flashy, expensive sports cars. That’s all a cover, though, for his real activities.
The story begins in Brazil, with Kyle and his colleagues reuniting a kidnapped child with his father, and quickly returns to the Foundation’s headquarters in New York. Their next case leads Kyle down a rabbit hole of conspiracies he could never have imagined when he agrees to look for a man everyone believed died when the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001. The story builds to a thrilling climax, with plenty of twists and turns to keep the reader guessing along the way, as Kyle pits his wits and his team of skilled operatives against the ultimate enemy.
From the very first line, Don Dahler hooked me into this story. Told in the first person from Kyle’s point of view, I slowly came to understand Kyle’s motivations even while some of his backstory remained an enigma – I’d love to know where he gained his fighting skills, for example. Even though Kyle lives in a world of unimaginable wealth, he comes across as both relatable and likable. With the best of motives, he bends and breaks laws in order to serve the greater good – in other words, doing a little wrong in order to do a great right.
While I found a very few spelling and grammar mistakes in the book, they certainly didn’t distract me from the overall story and indeed would very likely be overlooked by a reader less picky than myself. I’d love to read more of Kyle’s adventures; indeed, I could absolutely visualize this book as a movie or TV show. I imagined Ryan Reynolds in the lead role, though perhaps Don Dahler might envision him differently!
I’d highly recommend Do A Little Wrong to anyone who enjoys a good action thriller; fans of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series would thoroughly enjoy the read. I have no hesitation in awarding it four out of four stars.
Excerpt.
1
“With all due respect. That’s not the right knife.”
He blinked, glanced at the expensive blade he held in his hand, and looked back at me. I was standing next to the gleaming stainless-steel commercial range eight feet away.
His confident smirk slipped a few notches from confusion. “I’m quite sure it will do the job adequately.”
The reply, in Portuguese, had just a tinge of an urbane accent. Joao Consuelo Cabral was, after all, from the most privileged class of Rio de Janeiro. If Brazil had Kennedys, the Consuelos would be them — without the great hair and noblesse oblige, that is.
It was his kitchen in which we now stood, at his imported marble-topped center island with the double sinks and built-in warming oven in his multi-million dollar mountaintop home.
I would bet that until that moment, he’d spent a sum total of five minutes in that room. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who’d appreciate the fine art of cooking. Probably had people for that. To cook. To open his wine. To spread his Prato cheese. I have a hard time liking people who acquire the best of things, just to have the best of things, and never use them. Nice kitchens should be used as playgrounds and laboratories. Porsches are to be driven hard and pushed to the limits. Horses are to be ridden and loved and made to feel like part of the family. Swimsuit models are to be, well, enough with that. You get the point. I have a thing for cooking, and a thing for languages. Some people are good at sports or crossword puzzles. I’m good with food and words.
I leaned back against the range and folded my arms. Scratched at my beard. Sighed and shook my head slowly like some thoughtful professor. Yeah, that’s me —Il Professore.
“No, Joao, that is a Wusthof frozen food knife.” My Portuguese had an accent too. American. “Not a bad make, but I prefer Shuns. See the nicely serrated edges, like the teeth of a saw? They’re made for slicing through unthawed meats. But notice now the part of the handle that connects the metal to the wood. It flares slightly wider as it melds into the handle. That’s the bolster. There’s not much of that on this particular knife, is there? Do you see? Only about a centimeter.”
He couldn’t tell if I was pulling his leg. The wealthy Brazilian stole another glance at the knife, “I do not intend to use that part of it for what I have to do. All that is important is the cutting edge.”
“Well, there you are. That’s the problem.”
“The problem? For you, perhaps.”
“No, Joao, for you. You’re not planning on using a slicing motion, are you? What you have in mind is sticking that knife deep into my chest or stomach, correct?”
That woke him up. He blinked a few times, caught a breath, then nodded and took a step forward, the smirk finding solid footing again on his tanned, surgically improved face. “You are correct. I will enjoy hearing your very articulate description of how it feels to die that way.”
I gauged the distance between us and kept talking, “Well, you see, the moment you do that and the knife meets a tough obstacle, such as my . . .” the word escaped me, so I switched to the English, or maybe it’s Latin, or, whatever, “sternum bone or a rib, your hand will slide forward onto the serrated edge and cut you. You could even lose a finger or two in the process.”
Consuelo stopped in his tracks. He pondered my words of wisdom, looked around him, then switched the Wustof to his right hand, reached over to the enormous knife block, examined a few, and selected a large hollow-ground Santoku.
I clapped in approval. “Excellent choice! Large bolster. Extremely sharp, with good heft. Very good for slicing or plunging. But let me ask you this, does it not feel a tad, I don’t know, extravagant? For the purpose? A bit too much knife? After all, it’s not like you’re entering a sword fight.”
“You are mocking me now.” The eight feet between us had shrunk to five.
I shifted my weight imperceptibly to the balls of my feet. “You think? Of course I am, you steaming pile of donkey shit.”
His eyes widened at the insult. He’d probably never been called that before. To his face, anyway. I was happy to be the first. Getting him mad was the whole idea.
I kept at it: “And another thing. You should be ashamed. A real man, a renaissance man, knows his way around his own kitchen and all its wonders. Especially one constructed with such an eye for quality and purposefulness. For that reason alone I’d wager it was not designed by you. There is magic done here. Alchemy. But that’s beside the point. Just as you have never prepared a single meal here, you obviously have never been in a knife-fight before. You think size is everything, the length of the blade.”
“Vai-te foder! You’re about to feel the length –“
But he couldn’t finish the threat, because in the time it took him to say “fuck you!” the distance was closed, the arm holding the knife blocked, twisted, and trapped uselessly at the side of his head, while a lovely little paring knife with an inlaid rosewood handle, which had been cupped in the my palm with the three-inch blade hidden along the inside of my wrist, was now pressing against the Brazilian’s jugular vein.
I lowered my voice and whispered in his ear, “In a knife-fight, Joao, it is better to be small and fast than big and heavy.”
He caught his breath and tested my strength by trying to pull away. It didn’t take him long to realize the futility of that, so he relaxed.
To his surprise, I released his grip on his arm, pulled the knife away from his neck, took a few steps backward, and spread my hands wide. “Good. Now, what do you say? Shall we have another go? Seriously. Take your pick of weapons.” I held out the paring knife. “I’ll even let you try this pretty little one.”
The Brazilian stared at the knife, then at my face, then back at the knife, unsure of what just transpired. I felt a little sorry for him. One minute he had all the advantage over this strange intruder, the next minute, he was shaking from the adrenaline shooting through his veins, confused and stunned by how quickly I had turned the tables on him. Consuelo lowered the arm holding the Santoku, rubbed his sore shoulder, and set the blade on the countertop.
“No. I think I would rather not.”