From Library Journal
This novel, by the author of Spill ( LJ 5/15/91), will have readers on the edge of their seats. The setting is Miami. Our hero is Jack Deal, just trying to make a go of life. Several attempts to harm Deal have been made, without his knowing why. The latest attempt mistakenly sends his wife off a bridge into the Intracoastal Waterway. The car is found, but her body is not. Deal doesn't know who his enemies are, what they want, or why. We know they want his small building site, located in an area sewn up by the amoral Raoul Alacazar. The plot involves expansion team baseball, new stadiums, and, of course, big money. How Deal figures it out, exacts vengeance, and rescues the fair maiden make for a smashing good novel. Well recommended for public libraries.- Dawn L. Anderson, North Richland Hills P.L., Tex.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
Satire-laden Florida thriller from Standiford (Spill, 1991)- -with quirky characters, vivid settings, and riveting action done in Sam Peckinpah's slo-mo style. Baseball is happening in southern Florida. Down-on-his-luck Johnny Deal, son of a one-time prosperous developer, seemingly for old times' sake has been invited to a soir‚e aboard his dad's old pal's yacht--a gathering of movers and shakers hoping to bring the national pastime to Miami. Despite Thornton Penfield's opulent hospitality, the evening is a maudlin reminder of days past. So Deal and pregnant wife Janice escape early. The next day Deal's on his way to the Little Havana fourplex he's renovating (the last of his father's legacy) when a driver tries to run him off the road. To boot, his brakes fail and Deal narrowly avoids the ensuing multi-vehicle accident. This marks the onset of a rapid-fire series of debacles. First, Deal's wife is forced off a bridge and assumed drowned. Then he finds himself the focal point of mishaps orchestrated (he'll learn) by Cuban racketeer Raoul Alcazar. All this is niftily centered around the real-life question of who profits when a new major-league baseball franchise is awarded--one of Alcazar's hoods, black ex-footballer Leon Straight, has all the best lines on that and other subjects. A memorable creation, Leon is an all-time bad dude, offing several people and a dog in new and interesting ways. For himself, Deal is sided by dead best buddy Flivey Penfield and Homer the dwarf. Throw all of the above into the mix with Standiford's depiction of Miami's exotic landscape, melting-pot populace, and social ills for a page-turner of the first water. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
Done Deal is the first in the series featuring reluctant sleuth John Deal, a South Florida building contractor who has a penchant for stepping into the path of the wrong people. Here, Deal is struggling to rebuild the once formidable DealCo, a development company once headed by his flamboyant father Barton Deal--but little does he know that the piece of land upon which he plans to build a small apartment complex is coveted by a ruthless businessman intent on making a fortune off Major League Baseball's arrival in South Florida.

ANNOTATION

The Florida real estate glut has been tough on Johnny Deal and his small construction business. His new fourplex could bring him out of the slump, but it's standing on a piece of property someone is ready to kill for. Simultaneous publication with Standiford's new hardcover, Raw Deal.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In this absorbing new thriller by the author of Spill, the lives of a young Miami couple are shattered when they step into the path of some major league criminals who'll do anything to pull off the scam of a lifetime. Johnny Deal is a down-on-his-luck building contractor, struggling to revive his once-thriving family business in the new Miami. For Deal, raised on such quaint notions as a day's work for a day's pay and owning up to your mistakes, the transformation hasn't always been easy, not when he's trying to survive in a real estate glut. Still, he owns one piece of land free and clear, the fourplex he's building there is almost finished, and his wife, Janice, is finally pregnant after years of trying. The city too is engaged in a campaign of renewal, pursuing a baseball franchise that will bring America's pastime to the tropics. To Deal, a former college ballplayer, this campaign is a gentle suggestion that things may, at last, be going his way. Then Deal's luck runs completely dry. Janice is driving his car when she's forced off the precarious bridge that spans a rushing outlet from the Intracoastal to the Atlantic. The police find the car but not the body, and Deal is devastated because he knows it was supposed to be him in the car. when he learns that the killing is tied to one man's scheme to profit off Major League Baseball's arrival in Miami - and that Deal has been standing right in the way - the result is a single-minded quest for vengeance full of surprises, high-level chicanery, and a firestorm of violence that will change Deal's life and the city he loves forever.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews

Satire-laden Florida thriller from Standiford (Spill, 1991)—with quirky characters, vivid settings, and riveting action done in Sam Peckinpah's slo-mo style. Baseball is happening in southern Florida. Down-on-his-luck Johnny Deal, son of a one-time prosperous developer, seemingly for old times' sake has been invited to a soir￯﾿ﾽe aboard his dad's old pal's yacht—a gathering of movers and shakers hoping to bring the national pastime to Miami. Despite Thornton Penfield's opulent hospitality, the evening is a maudlin reminder of days past. So Deal and pregnant wife Janice escape early. The next day Deal's on his way to the Little Havana fourplex he's renovating (the last of his father's legacy) when a driver tries to run him off the road. To boot, his brakes fail and Deal narrowly avoids the ensuing multi-vehicle accident. This marks the onset of a rapid-fire series of debacles. First, Deal's wife is forced off a bridge and assumed drowned. Then he finds himself the focal point of mishaps orchestrated (he'll learn) by Cuban racketeer Raoul Alcazar. All this is niftily centered around the real-life question of who profits when a new major-league baseball franchise is awarded—one of Alcazar's hoods, black ex-footballer Leon Straight, has all the best lines on that and other subjects. A memorable creation, Leon is an all-time bad dude, offing several people and a dog in new and interesting ways. For himself, Deal is sided by dead best buddy Flivey Penfield and Homer the dwarf. Throw all of the above into the mix with Standiford's depiction of Miami's exotic landscape, melting-pot populace, and social ills for a page-turner of the first water.