Out on the Rim

Written by Ross Thomas

Narrated by David Birney,

What if you were offered a gig by some shadowy and well-financed interests to funnel five million dollars to rebels holed up in the Philippine mountains? They need to fund a revolt against the Aquino government and a resourceful and gutsy team to engineer it. And what a team it is: Booth Stallings, a terrorism expert, is the only man the rebel leader trusts as a liaison; Georgia Blue is a colorful, statuesque female bodyguard; “ Otherguy” Overby— so called for his skill in making sure whenever he's in trouble, that the other guy did it— is their point man; and for the sake of local expertise, is Artie Wu— the illegitimate son of the illegitimate daughter of the Boy Emperor of China— and his slick, often explosive partner Quincy Durant. None of them are very interested in the political power struggle, but five million dollars? That's another story!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phoenix Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 1, 1990
• ISBN: 9781607475873

Ross Thomas

The winner of the inaugural Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award, Ross Thomas (1926–1995) was a prolific author whose political thrillers drew praise for their blend of wit and suspense. Born in Oklahoma City, Thomas grew up during the Great Depression, and served in the Philippines during World War II. After the war, he worked as a foreign correspondent, public relations official, and political strategist before publishing his first novel, The Cold War Swap (1967), based on his experience working in Bonn, Germany. The novel was a hit, winning Thomas an Edgar Award for Best First Novel and establishing the characters Mac McCorkle and Mike Padillo.  Thomas followed it up with three more novels about McCorkle and Padillo, the last of which was published in 1990. He wrote nearly a book a year for twenty-five years, occasionally under the pen name Oliver Bleeck, and won the Edgar Award for Best Novel with Briarpatch (1984). Thomas died of lung cancer in California in 1995, a year after publishing his final novel, Ah, Treachery!

Reviews for Out on the Rim

[henrimoreaux · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An ex-soldier is hired to bribe a guerrilla fighter whom he had fought beside during world war 2. Rather than pay the bribe he decides to form a team of con men and attempt to swindle the 5 million dollars for himself. The story has its share of mystery and twists that keeps your interest and the pages turning.

[markatread · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Booth Stallings, a terrorism expert, is suddenly and unceremoniously fired from his job. Almost immediatley he is approached by an "arranger" that offers him the job of delivering 5 million dollars to a rebel fighter in the Phillipines. Stallings has been chosen for the job because the rebel fighter does not trust the people who are offering to pay him the $5 million "to retire" and choses Booth to bring the money to him because they fought together in WWII. And certainly the rebel fighter is right not to trust the people who are offering to pay him off so he will retire but he should not have trusted Booth either. Booth immediately begins plotting to find a way of not giving any of the money to the rebel fighter. He contacts Otherguy Overby (so named because he is able to always blame the "other guy" when things go wrong in one of his schemes) who assembles a team to con both the people giving the money to the rebel fighter as well as the rebel fighter himself.Otherguy Overby contacts Wu and Durant and the ride begins. The story is a Sting-like book where everyone on the team may also be working to con the rest of the team and walk off with more of the $5 million than they agreed to; the same may also be true with the guerilla group as well. The book is extremely well written and the reader will have trouble keeping up at times with all the complications that arise. The one thing that is also true though is that in the Sting we got to know the characters that Paul Newman and Robert Redford played well enough to be able to identify with them. In Out On The Rim, the author, Ross Thomas, doesn't do a lot of character development with any of the main characters. The characters are well defined and clearly identified, but character development is sacrificed so the author can keep everyone's motives and allegiances murky and uncertain. This helps the plot but the reader is left with much less of a rooting interest in the outcome. It probably is a good idea to read the first of the Wu and Durant books, Chinaman's Chance, first so that you will know them better before reading this one.