{"id":16023,"date":"2026-03-23T23:24:59","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T03:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/?p=16023"},"modified":"2026-03-23T23:25:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T03:25:01","slug":"dirty-work-by-stuart-woods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/23\/dirty-work-by-stuart-woods\/","title":{"rendered":"“Dirty Work” by Stuart Woods"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Copyright 2003 by Stuart Woods. Published by Penguin Putnam, Inc, New York.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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This is a book featuring Stone Barrington, Esquire, a lawyer who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty. In this Barrington novel – the 9th of 67 (Woods is very prolific) – the “dirty work” is photographing a husband getting a “happy ending” massage. The photographs were to be used in breaking a prenup so that the rich wife could continue to remain rich when she divorced her philandering hubby. Of course that work was a bit too dirty or too mundane for Stone so he subcontracted it. Unfortunately the subcontracting photographer fell through the skylight while getting the money shots, killing the husband on the massage table. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or so it seemed. But an autopsy proved that hubby was already dead when crushed by the photographer, apparently poisoned by the masseuse who was a notorious assassin, sought by British agents. The clumsy photographer did get some good photos of her – the only photos of her in existence. One of the British agents looking for the assassin was “Carpenter” (her code name – her real name may or may not have been Felicity), a beautiful woman who had a history with Stone. And, apparently, she was the next target of the assassin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a book of mistakes, screw-ups and misunderstandings. A lot of people die, usually for no good reason. In the wrong place at the wrong time or incorrectly accused of wrongdoing. Stone is caught between Carpenter and Marie-Therese (the maybe true name of the assassin), for whom he develops a begrudging respect because she seems to have more morals than most of the people searching for her. He puts himself into the odd position of becoming her lawyer and negotiating a truce between her and the Brits looking for her. But even that gets screwed up and more people die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There aren’t a lot of heroes in this book, but it is well-written with some interesting twists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7 out of 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Copyright 2003 by Stuart Woods. Published by Penguin Putnam, Inc, New York. This is a book featuring Stone Barrington, Esquire, a lawyer who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty. In this Barrington novel – the 9th of 67 (Woods is very prolific) – the “dirty work” is photographing a husband getting a “happy ending” massage. … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VniU-4ar","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16024,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16023\/revisions\/16024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}