When one nightclub owner does more business than all the others combined, his competition is bound to get jealous. When his club is completely legitimate, and hes beloved by his customers and the community, his competition is bound to get bitter and frustrated, too. Add the fact that his girlfriend is the hottest babe in town, and his competitors are going to feel like total zeros. So how do they get back in the game? Their only option, it seems, is to murder the number one guy. And thats what happens. They get together and discuss such a plan. But when the talk attracts a menacing bully, the otherwise improbable plan soon becomes an urgent, inexorable force. This is the setting for The Honey Bubble, a sometimes comic, sometimes poignant novel about a fateful scheme that throws two fragile lives into mortal combat, one born of psychotic imaginings, the other shaped by a profound secret. In the end, a sole survivor learns that fear is the greatest obstacle to self-discovery. If you like your liquor cut with tawdriness, you'll love this pungent, if distended, noir potboiler. At the story's sleazy center is Kenny Grimmet's bar, a dive where "the threadbare carpet.. smelled like old gym shoes" and "an intrepid cockroach skittering across a cocktail napkin" is the only sign of life. Frustrated with his faltering business, Kenny recruits two other bar owners in a scheme to murder Marty Bagliamente, owner of the only successful nightclub in the downscale Los Angeles suburb of Hillside Park. Screenwriter Putnam competently serves up the noir basics: hardboiled worldview, punchy dialogue, characters triangulated between quirky, lurid and desperate, and a dark, steamy atmosphere. -KirkusDiscoveries Putnam entices the reader from the beginning, bringing his characters alive and forcing the reader to keep turning the pages as plots and secrets are revealed...He keeps the reader wondering until the end and leaves no question unanswered. This was an excellent book and I look forward to reading more of George Putnam. AllAboutMurder.com