Margaret Cannon

CRIME

Funny Money
by Laurence Gough,
McClelland & Stewart,
257 pages

It seems a long time since the last novel from Laurence Gough featuring Jack Willows and Claire Parker. Gough keeps his long-running series fresh by introducing new characters while keeping the old ones solid. Here, Chantal is a reluctant prostitute trying to escape an abusive pimp. To earn a little extra cash, she turns a trick for a pair of thugs on their way to pay off Russian mafiya goons with counterfeit cash belonging to a local crime lord. The thugs pay Chantal with fakes, and soon she is on the run. There's plenty of action, including snippets from the Parker-Willows home scene with grown-up kids setting Claire's biological clock in motion. Very satisfying.