New York Times Review of The Adjustment by Scott Phillips

"Wayne Ogden is a prince of a fellow, as long as you judge this bad-boy protagonist of Scott Phillips’s caustic crime novel, THE ADJUSTMENT (Counterpoint, $25), according to his own perverse code of ethics. As a quartermaster for the United States Army stationed in Rome during World War II, Ogden had a rewarding career as a pimp and a trader on the black market. But life in postwar Wichita proves a letdown (even the funnies aren’t as “funny and mean as they used to be”), and Ogden feels his skills are wasted in his job, which involves enabling the owner of an aviation company to indulge his various degenerate and illegal hobbies. Going by his own rule book, Ogden is just “playing Good Samaritan” when he escorts pregnant girls to a “reliable angelmaker,” distributes drugs to needy addicts and takes lonely women to bed. And provided he doesn’t kill too many people or run out on his nice wife, who’s to say otherwise?" -- Marilyn StasioLink to review: http://ow.ly/6ytfm