Review of "Silver Dollar" a novella by Alan Trustman

Review of

Silver Dollar: a novella by Alan Trustman ISBN 9781535537742

Four out of five stars

 Betsy is a woman that lives in New York City and she lives fast, going through several quality men without actually being promiscuous. She has two children, one of which was not fathered by the man considered to be the father. Both of the children are successful and she keeps her secret. The book opens when Betsy is young and ends when she is around seventy.

 The reader is introduced to the speedy way that Betsy lives her life on the first pages. After meeting a man named Joel on a blind date set up by her friends Dean and Mari, Betsy takes Joel up on his suggestion that they take a cab to JFK airport and fly around the world. A short time into their journey Joel and Betsy are sharing a room and when they returned to JFK they parted and Betsy never saw or heard from Joel until roughly thirty years later when Joel has only a few weeks to live.

 The interpersonal relationships that Betsy has with her men and female friends keep your interest, but the spy and terrorist aspects of the plot come close to destroying the book. At the end, Betsy’s current male companion helps thwart a major, multi-pronged terrorist plot against the crowd at a football game. This attempt to interject some suspense fails to do that and comes across as artificial. While it is true that the threat of terrorism is a major modern thought, it is not a reasonable addition to many plots.