Cons

Watts's seductive debut thriller, featuring small-time crooks planning big-time crime in rural Beaufort, S.C., will steal hearts and win respect with its crisp grifter's patter and curveball plot line. Ex-con Frank (Cully) Cullen's plan to go straight evaporates when he slugs his boss. Herb Dorrance, a wealthy farm owner who witnesses the fight, gets the sheriff to let Cully out of jail by hiring him as a chauffeur for his seductive wife, Michelle, a former bar chanteuse. But almost immediately Herb shows his ugly true colors and his wife turns up her body heat, making Cully very nervous. Cully earns his pay when Michelle's former husband, bank robber Benny Marsh, gets out of Raiford State Penitentiary (Cully's alma mater) and into Herb's hair. Cully chases him off with a chain saw, putting hate in Benny's heart, steel in Herb's back and a plan in Michelle's head. But Cully falls for her gorgeous lookalike sister Kristin, erstwhile girlfriend of Benny's missing bank-robber partner and gun moll wannabe, and when Michelle pitches a big-score plan to Cully--along with the inevitable fringe benefit--he and Kristin decide to scoop the scam. Benny turns out to be smarter and meaner than he looks, making for a nerve-shredding ending. Watts has a solid noir voice, and his characters are both slimy and lucky enough to be worthy of Jim Thompson or James Crumley. (Feb.)