New Book Alert: Desire's End (The Desire Card Series Book Five) Predictable but Satisfying and Cathartic End

 

New Book Alert: Desire's End (The Desire Card Series Book Five) Predictable but Satisfying and Cathartic End 

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: If you haven't yet, I insist that you read either my reviews or the books themselves: Immoral Origins, Prey No More, All Sins Fulfilled, and Vicious Ripples by Lee Matthew Goldberg before reading this review. This review contains MAJOR HEAVY DUTY SPOILERS!!!!

Ready? Then let's go.

Now we finally come to the end. The Desire Card and its depraved demonic leader, Jay Howell AKA Clark Gable come to a satisfactory completion.

This book is pure resolution, where all loose ends are tied, all things are revealed, and the characters meet their final destinies. All previous volumes have led to this moment and head towards the final successful pay off.

If you have grown to detest Howell as much as this Reader has, it's quite satisfying to see him brought down in a schadenfreude sort of way. On the run from his various enemies, he attempts to kidnap Gracie, his granddaughter and unsuccessfully rebuild his empire. This goes quickly awry and he is forced to hide out in the jungle.

In hiding, he encounters a female shaman who gleefully shows him the eventual ruin of his empire and his life.

Meanwhile, three other people are fast approaching, all familiar to the Readers: J.D. Storm, former assassin turned enemy, Monica Bonner, police detective who investigated Gracie's previous kidnapping and cannot stop her investigation against the Desire Card, and Helene Howell-Stockton, Jay's daughter, a philanthropist who has finally realized that her father is a monster who needs to be stopped. Even the shaman has her own pound of flesh to take from the corrupt CEO/Crime Boss.

It helps to take satisfaction in Howell's end by not making him sympathetic. He's a weasley bully who uses everyone around him in the beginning and is a weasley bully who uses everyone around him at the end. No part shows this more than the chapters between Howell and Gracie.

Gracie was an unwilling pawn in Vicious Ripples but during her captivity from J.D., she displayed some potential sociopathic tendencies that suggest that she was meant to become Jay's little heiress. 

In the previous book, she cold bloodedly shot another kidnapper.

In this book the young lady displays her worst qualities as almost a way of saying, "Look Grandpa Jay, look what I can do. See what a good little girl I am?" She manipulates girls to join her grandfather's prostiution ring and uses her ballet skills to create a dancing school front for the ring. Even when she is separated from Howell, she still inherits his evil tendencies by selling hard drugs to schoolmates.

Of all the things that Howell did in the five books, his manipulation of Gracie is the worst. He made the choice to take a life of crime as an adult, fully aware of the potential paths that lay before him. He chose the path of easy money, notoriety, and luxury.

Gracie is a child surrounded by adults who come to her grandfather like he's the Pied Piper of crooks. She has been groomed to become a criminal with no choice or chance to be normal. Now that she knows, she can't live in denial. Her innocence has been forever ruined by Howell's actions and choices. Her own agency and control for her future had long been taken away from her.

J.D., Monica, and Helene are as wounded as ever and are ready to end Howell's hold on them once and for all. The book covers a period of several years, so there are moments of hope and sadness. Helene loses some important people in her life, but finally becomes closer to her hippy boyfriend, Peter. She is trying to rebuild a new life and wants to cut her former life as a Howell and a Stockton. 

Helene was a philanthropist just to make her family look good. Since then, she became involved in philanthropy in earnest because she knows about loss and pain. She sees others sufferings. She has a chance to be a better person and she won't let her father take that from her.

J.D. and Monica also find a new life in a surprising place….with each other. It's a pairing that seems abrupt but considering that they have suffered tremendous loss and have a shared history (even if it was once as opposite sides of the law), the initial weirdness disappears. 

J.D.'s girlfriend, Annie was killed by Desire Card operatives, feeding his thirst for revenge. Now his vengeance is gone, he just floats along, finding a place of quiet and solitude.

While Monica's son died from an illness, her grief fuelled her search for Gracie and put her right into Howell's orbit.

She also resigned her police position and is trying to live a stress free life.

Monica meets J.D. trying to rebuild his life and the two hook up. Despite their burgeoning relationship, they can't put their past behind them until they face Howell one final time.

Another character with her own interesting backstory is the shaman. Her story is too enticing to reveal in this review but let's say the series finally comes full circle and if anyone has a major ax to grind against Howell, it's her. She uses intimidating physical threats and her supernatural abilities to show the literal and figurative monster that Howell is and why so many people would like to see the back of him. The shaman gives Howell his final comeuppance in a way that is long predicted but ultimately satisfying and cathartic.

Desire's End is the perfect ending to an exciting and suspenseful series. After all the twists, turns, duplicity, and betrayal, it's great to see this card get canceled on a high note.

New Book Alert: Vicious Ripples (The Desire Card Book Four) by Lee Matthew Goldberg; Fourth Desire Card Book Brings Things to the Falling Action Act

 

New Book Alert: Vicious Ripples (The Desire Card Book Four) by Lee Matthew Goldberg; Fourth Desire Card Book Brings Things to the Falling Action Act

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: Stop! Before you read this review, I must give you a homework assignment. Please read either the previous books or my reviews for the other books in the Desire Card Series: Immoral Origins, Prey No More, and All Sins Fulfilled. I am going to reveal some important things in this review and I do not want any Reader to go in unprepared. Needless to say this review contains MAJOR HEAVY DUTY SPOILERS!!!!!

You back and prepped? Okay good, on we go.

Any follower of Shakespeare's plays knows that each play follows a basic five act structure. Act 1 is the introduction, Act 2 is the rising action, Act 3 is the climax, Act 4 is the falling action, and Act 5 is the resolution.

Lee Matthew Goldberg's five volume The Desire Card Series is Shakespearean in structure (and come to think of it in theme and characterization as well).

The first volume Immoral Origins was the Introduction. It introduced us to the Desire Card organization and their beginnings in the 1970's as they grant the wishes of the wealthy for a price. We meet the employees operating in disguise as Hollywood stars such as newcomer Erroll Flynn and the Card's enigmatic founder, Clark Gable. We see the rivalry formed between Gable and head of the European branch, Sir Laurence Olivier and what happens when Flynn tries to get away and revert back to his original identity of petty thief, Jake Barnum.

The second volume, Prey No More is the rising action, set forty years later when the Desire Card has gained power and influence in various business and political circles. They have operators all over the world and one of them, J.D. Storm AKA James Dean, goes on the lam. This results in lots of murders and J.D.'s hatred and thirst for revenge against the card and the people behind it.

All Sins Fulfilled the third book is the climax when well to do, Harrison Stockton needs a liver transplant and solicits a certain card to fill that request. This ends in some major revelations that reveal the people behind the masks, particularly Gable who is much closer than Harrison had previously been aware. It also culminates in J.D.'s act of revenge against Gable, the Card, and all it stands for.

The fourth volume, Vicious Ripples, is the falling action demonstrating what happens after the earth shattering revelations from All Sins Fulfilled are revealed.(The next volume, Desire's End appears to be the resolution where the Card and its treacherous founder come to their long overdue finish.)

Vicious Ripples is set immediately after J.D. Storm, now using the name Marcus Edmonton, has kidnapped 10 year old Gracie Stockton, the daughter of Harrison Stockton and his ex-wife, Helene Howell. Besides combining the protagonists from the previous two volumes, the kidnapping is for a darker and more serious reason. 

Gracie is the granddaughter of Jay Howell, businessman and multi billionaire. Oh yeah and Howell has another important distinction, a side hustle if you will. He is the creator and founder of the organization behind a certain card that we have been familiar with for the past year.

That's right, Jay Howell is also known to the Readers as Clark Gable, the mysterious and sinister head of the Desire Card. 

J.D.'s demands are simple. He wants the Desire Card disbanded for good. Also, he's not the only one who is after Howell/Gable. 

Harrison has his own unresolved issues with his former father in law. Howell's European rival, Oliver AKA Sir Laurence  Olivier (wow original) wants to cut into the competition. Ambitious and driven, Detective Monica Bonner is overcoming her personal loss by investigating Gracie's kidnapping and some mysterious deaths connected to the card. Gee, it seems like creating an organization that thrives on theft, drug dealing, murder, and other illegal nefarious acts to fulfill other's darkest desires seems like a bad idea since in the end it creates so many enemies who would like to see one dead. Who would have thought?

Even though many things were revealed in the previous volume and this one, there are still enough twists and turns to make Volume Four a good read. In fact, it's better than All Sins Fulfilled because there aren't as many slow parts which bring down the protagonist until they discover the card and start using it. By this point, the Reader knows about the Card, how it's used, and who the players are. The question is what are they going to do as their world comes crashing down around them?

Of course if you are a Narcissistic master criminal like Howell, you are going to do one of two things: scheme against your enemies and get as much as you can or if you go down, you take everyone else with you. Either way, Howell is backed into a corner and is going to strike at his enemies.

His few remaining supporters are like the last survivors on the Titanic still clinging to their Hollywood identities: Audrey Hepburn, Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper, Marlon Brando, Mae West, and a new James Dean. Many of them are freelancers who stick with Howell for financial gain. Others because they have nowhere else to go. Still others, namely Audrey and Dean, have personal reasons to stick close to their fearless leader. It is a sad pathetic group that remains, not like the far reaching, intimidating, glamorous, and hedonistic Desire Card operatives of the past.

It's also pretty clear that Howell uses these operatives like he uses everyone else. While he does have the capacity to care for certain people and is genuinely worried about Gracie, the narrative makes it clear that he values the Desire Card over everything else. 

Now that Howell's mask has been removed and his true self has been revealed, he is shown to be a self centered despicable creep who would sacrifice anyone to keep his operation running. (Not going to miss this guy once he's gone.)

It is interesting the various ways in which Howell's enemies go through to take him down, never actually combining their resources to fight the common enemy (Maybe that will be saved for Volume Five). Oliver uses his own card connections such as a couple of traitors in Howell's midst and his own operatives like Evchen, his second who assumes the identity of Marlene Dietrich. He fights duplicity with duplicity and strives to be every bit as cunning as his rival.

Monica uses the law and her own detective instincts. Because she also suffered the loss of a child, she relates to the Stocktons even though she is not in their socioeconomic class. She, like Helene, is a grieving mother and wants to relieve Gracie's parents of the burden of loss that she lives with every day. In a series full of criminals, illegal activity, and narcissists galore, Monica Bonner is the lone moral center.

While Harrison is out for the count through most of the book, he and Helene use their family connection and inside knowledge of Howell's home life and what he does when he's not in the mask. In fact, much of the intel is provided by overhearing conversations and searching through private files. It also opens up a lot of development for Helene who was once Daddy's Little Spoiled Pampered Princess and now has to face the truth about her father and where her rich life came from.

J.D.'s course of revenge is by far the strongest and most gripping. He was once a hitman with a heart of gold who walked out on the Desire Card when he began to question their methods. He had a chance to build a decent post-Desire life and then lost it all.

Now in Vicious Ripples, he has become everything that he once despised. A ruthless assassin with no conscience and is willing to hurt innocents to get his needs met. He is the final result of what the Desire Card turns people into: remorseless monsters with nothing left to lose.

Some of J.D.'s best moments are when he is with Gracie. The flickers of conscience still remain as he watches over the girl and tries to explain who her grandfather really is. He also watches in bemusement and horror as Gracie begins to accept her grandfather's identity and even absorbs some of the lessons that the adults around her are teaching. She learns them all too well in some very horrifying scenes that suggest that she too is the final result of the Desire Card's sinister dealings and Howell's insatiable avarice.

As great as this volume is, there are two rather questionable things. In one chapter during a confrontation between Howell and an enemy, something strange, sinister, and almost supernatural happens. It seems to come out of nowhere but perhaps it is an intentional callback to an earlier theory about the Card's origins. (Now with that scene, is the theory back on the table?)

The other question is a missed opportunity, or rather a missing piece to the revenge puzzle. We have seen most of the previous protagonists take on the Desire Card save one, Jake Barnum, the main character in Immoral Origins. While yes his death at the ending of the first volume would mean he can't be there physically, it's upsetting that some plot threads in that book were left dangling and he isn't there in spirit.

Jake's former girlfriend, Desire operative Marilyn Monroe, was alive, well, and remained a Card operative at the end of Immoral Origins. That's the last we hear from her and she makes no reappearance nor is referred to in subsequent volumes. You think that since Jake couldn't be there, at least Marilyn or better yet a potential offspring of theirs, could be there to settle an old score. (Of course I may be getting ahead of myself. Desire's End may answer that question.)

Well, the only thing left is a resolution. It will be interesting to see what happens when Desire's End takes a pair of scissors and finally cuts the card.

New Book Alert: All Sins Fulfilled (The Desire Card Book 3) by Lee Matthew Goldberg; The Desire Card, a Customer's Story

 

New Book Alert: All Sins Fulfilled (The Desire Card Book 3) by Lee Matthew Goldberg; The Desire Card, a Customer's Story

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: One thing that I have learned in reading The Desire Card series, if one ever uses that card identity theft is the least of their concerns. In fact by the time Desire's leader, Clark Gable and his cohorts are through with their hapless customer, they would hope that their identity would have been the only thing that was taken.

In this volume in Lee Matthew Goldberg's addictive and intense psychological thriller crime series, the point of view shifts from Gable's employees and underlings to a customer, the wealthy folk who are given the card and the promise that any wish will be fulfilled for the right price.

This latest victim on Gable's hit list is Harrison Stockton. Unlike the previous lead characters Jake Barnum and J.D. Storm, Harrison is high up on the economic scale. He climbed from a lower middle class upbringing to marry wealthy heiress, Helene Howell. He works in Mergers & Acquisitions while Helene is involved in various philanthropic organizations. They live in a swank apartment on Fifth Avenue and have two children named Gracie and Brenton and a cat named Chauncey. Harrison seems to have everything but then just as quickly ends up with nothing.

He loses his cushiony job. His troubled argumentative marriage with Helene ends in separation. We can't even say at least Harrison still has his health because he learns that he has liver disease and needs a transplant. After a suspenseful, if a bit overlong, section in India where Harrison searches for a possible donor and surgeon only to learn that he has been conned, he turns his attention to a card that his former boss gave him. A card that earlier had granted his wish for a prostitute and now says that he will be given a liver. A card that is new to him but far from new to the Reader: The Desire Card.

In the third volume to the series, it is great that we are given an outsider's perspective to the Card. In the first two volumes, we are told that the Card honors the wishes of the wealthy elite. Now, we see one of the wealthy elites that benefit from the Desire Card's services and pays for people like Jake and J.D. to live and fill their own wishes. We see that getting one's wishes fulfilled and being a Desire client isn't any better than being an employee. There are still strings attached, violent bloody strings, and the wealthy client that gets those services can be just as imprisoned and just as in danger as the poor employee that does those services. In Harrison's case, he realizes that his wealth and connections won't protect him from the Desire's real schemes. 

In his own way, Harrison is just as lost as Jake and J.D. are. He was insulated from the real world in his climb to the top. When he is face to face with this violent world, Harrison's conscience gets the better of him and he realizes that he can't let innocent people suffer so he can get his wishes met. When Harrison realizes the cost, his own life is threatened. As we all know, once the Desire Card has you, they aren't the type to let you go.

What is missing from this volume is the secrecy and eccentricity of the previous books in the series. We only see the Hollywood masked hoodlums a few times so they aren't as present as they were in the past. In fact the ones that we do meet are familiar in their assumed and real identities: James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Rita Hayworth, et al. Yep, it's the exact same characters from Prey No More. In fact, it becomes apparent that All Sins Fulfilled serves as a midquel to Book 2 so we actually do know who some of those masked men and women are anyway.

What All Sins Fulfilled lacks in secrecy, it finally makes up for in answers. We finally get some solutions to the questions that have been hounding this series since Immoral Origins. I dare not reveal them, but it makes sense that Goldberg saves the big reveals for this volume, where it makes the biggest impact.

It also is cleverly revealed because there were hints in the previous books that this was the trajectory and plan all along. It will be fun for the amateur armchair detective to go back through the series and locate the clues that had been staring at us in the face for three books.

However, there is some wiggle room in the answers that we are given to call more tantalizing theories and ask questions that could still happen.

The timing of Prey No More and All Sins Fulfilled occurring at the same time and the answers that we are finally given in All Sins make the climactic ending in Prey No More even more traumatizing. Goldberg has at least two more volumes in the series. Book 4 demands for a confrontation, possibly a final resolution. I'm not sure what is in store for Book 5, maybe a prequel on how the Desire Card began. Whatever it is, my greatest wish right now is to read what happens.

New Book Alert: Prey No More (The Desire Card Book 2) by Lee Matthew Goldberg; More of the Good, Creepy, and Sinister Same

 

New Book Alert: Prey No More (The Desire Card Book 2) by Lee Matthew Goldberg; More of the Good, Creepy, and Sinister Same

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Just when you thought it was safe to use your credit card, the Desire Card team is back to severely cut your throats-uh interest rates. Well before they cut your throat, your organs, and the organs of your closest friends and family members.

Set approximately 40 years after the first book Immoral Origins, the antagonists of Lee Matthew Goldberg's creepy and sinister crime thriller series have grown their operation exponentially. Once in a hideout near Hell's Kitchen New York, the main office is in a swank penthouse. Instead of wearing human-like masks of Old Hollywood stars, the do badders can now opt to get surgery to look like the stars of yesteryear. Some don't even don the Hollywood identities, so a Desire Card employee could be anyone: your lover, your mother, the hotel desk clerk, that nice old lady across the street, anybody.

Once with two offices in New York and London (with the London office only having two employees), Desire now has offices and operators all over the world and have their fingers in just about every corrupt activity going on. What hasn't changed are the Old Hollywood identities that many who work for the card live under, though now not everyone, and that the entire outfit is still overseen by the amoral enigmatic Clark Gable.

The protagonist in this one couldn't be more different from the predecessor's Jake Barnum AKA Erroll Flynn, if he tried. Instead we get J.D. Storm, Iraqi War vet and former sniper, now operating under the name and guise of James Dean. Instead of the wide eyed petty crook that Jake was, J.D. has been in the Desire Card game for some time. He has acquired a reputation for good marksmanship and ruthless efficiency. He and his partner, Humphrey Bogart are not to be trifled with.

Unfortunately, J.D. has a handicap that prevents him from being 100% good at his job. He is afflicted with a terminal case of conscience. He hesitates to go after a young woman and then when he and Bogart are to kill a man in front of his young son, J.D. refuses and goes into hiding. The Desire Card do not take resignation lightly. I mean he didn't even give two week's notice-rude! So, J.D. is on the run and never knowing when the Desire Card will catch up to him or who is affiliated with them.

Besides this, we also go into the background of J.D's life before he joined the card and how he got involved. He grew up in a small town in Washington state and had a girlfriend, Annie, who worked as a mark for a gang of thieves. She used her body to distract cashiers and clerks while her colleagues robbed them. J.D. suggested that she could go legit. In response to that suggestion, Annie left to join her gang and J.D. left to join the Army.

While on the battlefield, J.D. was trained as a sniper, only to be shot in the eye which could be detrimental for a sniper (no depth perception). So upon returning home, J.D. gets an eye patch and an overwhelming feeling of PTSD. He joins a support group which includes a woman named Rita, who looks a great deal like Rita Hayworth. Guess who she works for?

This beginning and the chapters where J.D. returns to his small town and reunites with Annie reveal the type of character that J.D. was and might still have been if the Desire Card hadn't gotten hold of him. He was once a good guy who couldn't stand to see innocents suffer. He was protective of abused women and children. During his time with the Card and even during his exile from them, his once idealistic protective nature is crushed. By the end he becomes the very monster that he once feared, one who will willingly kill the innocent without conscience, to get even with someone else.

What is revealed throughout this volume is how much The Desire Card has grown in size, prominence, and means. One way this is evident is in the recruitment process of new agents. In Immoral Origins, Jake and other newbies wore faceless masks and did petty crimes like delivering drugs and other suspicious packages before moving up to big crimes and Hollywood names. J.D. did not go through that. He was handed the James Dean mask right away and given murderous assignments instantly.

From a storytelling standpoint, it makes sense that Goldberg wanted to skip this part since he didn't want to repeat himself but it also reveals something more sinister about Desire's current practices. They don't test the recruits because they don't have to. They already know what they have done and are capable of doing. All they have to do is look up records, research names, find their weaknesses and strengths, and voila another star is added to their heavens or rather hells.

 Once a frightening organization hiding in the shadows, the Desire Card is now upfront and somehow more dangerous. Who knows how many CEO's, politicians, tyrants, celebrities, and people both famous and infamous have made deals with the Card? How many world events can be laid at the feet of Gable and Co.? How many innocent lives have been killed and operators rubbed out when they, like Jake and J.D., have seen the light? There is no telling and with an organization as large and as powerful as Desire Card, little chance of bringing them down.

After all, since we the Readers and the characters know very little about how the Desire Card operates, it could go on forever. There is a strong possibility, even suggested in the text, that the identities behind the mask change. There are a couple of Old Hollywood identities that I know for sure cannot be the same characters in the previous book. Also who's to say that this Gable is the same person as before? 

In the 70's, Gable was more than likely middle aged and had been around for some time to create and organize the card and learn what he knew about the people behind him. That he is still alive and active is possible, but not likely. Though if he is the same man as before, it does bring some interesting possibilities as we learn more about him (and definitely crosses out one of my previous theories about him). 

We learn that this Gable has a family including an adorable granddaughter and Chip, a flamboyantly gay son, whom he gives out of the way jobs to get rid of him. Chip especially bears an intriguing speculation. He's about late 30's to early 40's which meant that he might have been born around the same time or right after Immoral Origins. So if Gable is the same man as before, Chip's mother may also be a familiar figure from Book 1 as well. 

As the Desire Card becomes larger, their stranglehold on their agents and clients become that much greater. They are practically unstoppable. Who knows how much larger they can grow and how many are destroyed by Book 3? One thing is for certain, it will be as sinister, suspenseful, and as hard to put down as the rest.

New Book Alert: Immoral Origins (The Desire Card Book 1) by Lee Matthew Goldberg;. Suspenseful Crime Thriller About the Hidden Cost of Desire and Success

 

New Book Alert: Immoral Origins (The Desire Card Book 1) by Lee Matthew Goldberg;. Suspenseful Crime Thriller About the Hidden Cost of Desire and Success

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: What's on your reading list?

What if you had a card that would give you anything that you desired and removed any obstacle to obtain it? How satisfied would you be or would you want more? What if in obtaining your heart's desire, it involved the deaths of people? Maybe people you don't know, maybe a rival, but it could just as easily involve the death of a friend or family member? After all, the cost of this card is only your soul. Now would you do it?

This premise is explored in Lee Matthew Goldberg's The Desire Card series and particularly its first volume, Immoral Origins. As with his previous novels, Slow Down and Orange City, Goldberg shows the perils of cold blooded pure unadulterated naked ambition and its effect on a small time guy who is playing in bigger more dangerous leagues.

Jake Barnum, our protagonist, is a petty crook going nowhere fast. He just got out of prison and is left homeless and unemployable. He then moves back in with his parents and his mentally challenged brother, Emile. He is subjected to his parent's poverty which is revealed by the frequent visits to the hospital and medical bills to diagnose Emile's condition and his father working two jobs and getting only two hours of sleep per day. Jake's relationship with his girlfriend, Cheryl is coming to an end. (After stealing her a tennis bracelet from Tiffany's, Jake finds out that she is seeing someone else.) His childhood friend, Maggs introduces him to his boss, Georgie who wants him to do "pick ups and deliveries" and not ask questions. In Hell's Kitchen New York in 1978, that type of job can only mean one thing and they aren't mail carriers.

One Halloween night, Jake, dressed as Erroll Flynn's Robin Hood, encounters a woman dressed as Marilyn Monroe and only answers to that name. Marilyn informs Jake that she works for a company that grants wishes, with the Desire Card. It's everywhere you want to be….whether you like it or not. 

Marilyn introduces Jake to her boss, an enigmatic man known only as Clark Gable because like Marilyn, he wears costumes and a mask resembling the Hollywood actor. In fact all of the Desire Card employees and elite guests dress up in the masks and costumes of old Hollywood stars. There is Bette Davis typing away every conversation in front of her, even small talk. Gregory Peck is ruthless in the job and in his relationship with Marilyn. Spencer Tracy is Gable's informant.  Katharine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier  run the European branch. Now Jake has a new identity as Erroll Flynn. Marilyn says that it's a disguise to hide who the people really are from the outside world and themselves. Your Hollywood mask, don't leave home without it.

The Desire Card is meant to fulfill the holder's wishes whether it's to get more money, a promotion at work, or in Jake's family's case top notch medical care for a loved one. Gable and his operatives do anything to make those wishes come true. However, the means are less like Santa Claus and more like Al Capone or Jimmy Savile. They resort to kidnapping, theft, sexual assault, and murder to get the job done. They are also expanding their services into drugs and other extra "benefits" that come with having the card. The more that Jake profits from his time with the Desire Card, the greedier and more addicted he gets to power and success. After all, doing illegal deeds to meet one's desire: Expensive. Murdering other people: Costly. Selling one's soul: Priceless.

In this book, Goldberg does what he does best: shows how power and ambition could be an addiction and how often these little guys become swept in and end up becoming the deadliest force of all. Jake is like the petty crook in gangster films who robs stores and takes drugs thinking that makes him tough. Then he gets involved with a much bigger and deadlier group. Amidst the wild parties, frequent sex, and nights out in fancy restaurants, he realizes the darker side of his new friend and now that darker side is turned towards him. In the grand scheme of criminal activity, Jake is a small dog, a Yorkie, yipping at the heels of a pack of dobermans and acts surprised when they snarl their teeth and shed blood on him.

He enjoys the protection that they give him and the treatment that Emile receives. He also likes the flash and glamor that he is exposed to as he ascends higher in the organization. 

Jake at first has few moral concerns. As long as he's getting everything that he wants, he doesn't question the things that he has to do. Even after he expresses qualms about killing for the first job, he ends up becoming okay with it later-as long as the people he goes after are enemies or strangers. It's when they go after friends and family, that Jake questions his new life. Jak is an extremely egocentric selfish creep of a weak willed character who only has moral qualms when it personally involves him. That makes him the perfect victim for the people behind the card.

The Desire Card employees are an intriguing bunch because they are so mysterious. Their only identities are their Hollywood names and characters. I suppose we could infer from their chosen identities who they might have been. Maybe Bette was a tough gal who liked to be a Jezebel. Perhaps, Katharine came from a wealthy Connecticut background and Olivier might be a devotee of Shakespeare.

We learn a bit about Marilyn and everything about her backstory is similar to her character: the lost lonely young girl, the attraction to powerful dangerous men, the sadness hidden behind a glamorous facade. But the Reader only learns a little bit about her. She loves her identity as Marilyn so she insists that's all there is. Part of working for the Desire Card is to become their deepest desire.

The most mysterious of all is their leader, Gable. Everything that we learn about him is repeatedly proven or disproven. Does he have a family or doesn't he? How long has he been doing this? How does he find out everyone's desires and secrets? Is he just really good at obtaining informants or is there something else? Is there something supernatural at work here? After all, doesn't the Desire Card sound an awful lot like a deal with the devil? We learn nothing and see nothing except what Gable wants us to see.  It will be interesting to see how Gable and his subordinates continue to play out this mystery in the rest of the series.

Immoral Origins is great at dissecting what the hidden cost is obtaining power and success without a conscience. There are some books that explore this theme without success. For everything else, there's Immoral Origins.