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.