Caravan of Thieves

Like le Carré’s A Perfect Spy, screenwriter Rich’s assured first novel explores the relationship between a son and an untrustworthy father. Soon after Marine Lt. Rollie Waters, who rebelled against his father, Dan, by not lying, cheating, or stealing, returns to Camp Pendleton in California from an undercover mission in Afghanistan, two men who have been tailing him shoot out the window of his jeep. After he forces their vehicle off the road, he’s deemed to have been driving drunk and gone AWOL. Back at the base, the commanding officer orders Waters to locate his con man father and the millions in cash Dan is suspected to possess that came from Saddam Hussein’s horde of U.S. dollars seized by American troops during the 2003 occupation of Baghdad. Rich tosses in both humor and surprising plot twists, and though his characters lack the psychological depth of, say, le Carré’s Magnus Pym, they are distinctive enough for the reader to care what happens to them. Agent: Kimberly Witherspoon, Inkwell Management. (Aug.)