Tom Minder

Mormons, Amazons and Italians

The Ferret is a refreshingly funny and interesting read. Author Tom Minder uses a deft touch combined with excellent research to tell a convoluted tale of three cultures.

Beginning with a young Mormon elder named Louis Kimball, who is rather unfortunately known as Louis the Ferret, due to his unique facial features, the story weaves a web of illicit shadow groups in each group involved.

What I liked best about The Ferret is that the story never took itself too seriously but still managed to be entertaining and kept me invested until the end.

Tom Minder creates such quirky yet relatable characters, sets them in real world situations and steers the plot in believable yet slightly odd directions.

I really enjoyed The Ferret and look forward to reading more of his writing. I think he has nowhere to go but up.… (lisätietoja)

Well, I hope any member of the Church of Latter Day Saints who picks up this book has a sense of humor! The basic premise is that some in the LDS hierarchy have cooked up a scheme to enrich themselves in a real estate project by partnering with the mob. The main protagonist has been appointed to a job as what he thinks is field manager, but what he soon finds out is quite different. His real function is be the nice guy as the public face of the venture, to sign documents without being able to read them first, and to be the fall guy if things go wrong – as they certainly will.
At first the job has its perks, some not what Mormons are expected to appreciate. The project is near Las Vegas, so there are trips to casinos, drunken orgies, relationships with women of shady reputation – well, you get the picture. Louie, the young man at the center of things, resists temptation to a degree, but Isaiah, the Accountant and more importantly the mob representative, soon drags him into the gutter, so to speak. Louie gets the feeling that things will go wrong, and when an FBI agent shows up, he learns they have indeed.
Louie is basically a good guy, and winds up as a witness for the government, resulting in the bad guys being sent away. However, being a witness against this group is not a healthy thing to be, so Louie goes into the Witness Protection Program and moves across country to New Jersey.
Fast forward a few years, and Louie, who now goes by his new identity Hank, has a wonderful girlfriend and an important job in the construction of a shopping mall. He is very good at his job; too good as it turns out, because he has drawn attention to himself and gets his picture in the papers and on TV. When he and his girlfriend become engaged and announce their wedding, this adds to his exposure. As the reader would expect, this results in additional adventures which I won’t describe and spoil the ending.
I really enjoyed the book. It was well plotted and well written, and has laughs along the way. And for those wondering about the title, Louie has a face that reminds people of a ferret, so he is sometimes referred to as, “You mean that guy who looks like a ferret?”… (lisätietoja)