It was supposed to be a simple con for long time married con artists currently using the aliases Tom and Patty Brown. But best laid plans can sometimes go amiss. And, in this case, really amiss. Their plan is to falsify the environmental reports on a contaminated tract of lakefront property and sell the land to a local gangster who is involved in real estate development ... but others have different plans with double cross after double cross. They manage to get away, but find themselves pursued by their ex-partner Buddy, now seeking revenge.

Running short of money, they take on a simple robbery that turns out to be anything but simple. They manage to do the robbery but immediately come under a hail of gunfire. What was supposed to be an easy job was certainly more. Things quickly get even more dangerous when they are targeted by an old mark that wants them dead.

I found The Traveling Man by Michael P. King to be an interesting and well developed story. As good writers know, the characters of a book should be well defined. Their strengths and weaknesses should be developed. They don’t have to be likable, but the reader must be able to form a connection with them. I wasn't sure of the characters in this story at first and didn't particularly like them, but after continuing further I began to see where there were some interesting qualities among all the bad. The book does contain a lot of sex, violence and strong language, but in this case it's not necessarily a bad thing.

The Traveling Man is the first volume of Michael P. King's crime thriller series, The Travelers. Tom and Patty are confidence tricksters who shed identities as they travel the country looking for marks and setting up hustles. They're currently setting up the Yosts, an elderly couple in Seanboro who have prime lakefront acreage that was contaminated by the US Air Force. Tom presented himself as a real estate broker who could arrange to get the land declared as clean and then sell it to a developer. While the Yosts are initially dismayed by the 50% fee Tom proposes, they're quickly persuaded to agree to the scheme. Patty goes to work on Bernie Revere, the county environmental officer, and Buddy, the couple's partner, finds a real estate agent to help them work the hustle.

Michael P. King's crime thriller, The Traveling Man, is a dark and brooding story about a grifter, his lover, and the world he sets out to hustle. Tom just doesn't see himself as a nine-to-five civilian, and grifting is what he knows. He and Patty have what appears to be a warm and loving relationship, even if the much younger woman finds ways within their plans to seduce and trap marks, and seems to get some enjoyment from this. The Yost plan is cleverly set up and King makes the con work quite well, even if there's a lot of blood and nowhere near the payout the couple expected from their operation. The Traveling Man contains quite a bit of violence and reveals Tom as somewhat of a sociopath who's never quite sure if he'll have to kill Patty somewhere along the way, even if he'll miss her terribly afterwards. This well-written crime thriller will delight noir fans; it offers an intriguing look at the personality of a modern day highwayman.

The Traveling Man (The Travelers Book 1) by Michael P. King is a dark thriller revolving around the lives of the two central protagonists. A married couple, who go by the name of Tom and Patty Brown, are consummate swindlers and con artists. The two of them team up with their partner, a guy named Buddy Ray, and arrive at a town called Seanboro. They plan to carry out a scheme to earn a lot of money in real estate by falsifying reports and by sale of land based on false papers. Soon, however, we find them getting more and more deeply enmeshed in their plan and the game playing, back biting, and double crossing that follows. Very soon, the former friends turn foes and Buddy Ray is now seeking vengeance against his ex-partners. Old feuds and enemies are brought into the mix as well as the plot thickens and we are taken on a roller-coaster ride of thrills, intrigue, and action.

I found The Traveling Man (The Travelers Book 1) by Michael P. King to be quite entertaining with a tightly woven plot. The central protagonists as well as the supporting characters are superbly drawn and I alternately found myself on their side or against them, depending on the situations in the book. Overall, though, the characters are spunky and fun to read and relate to. This is a fun read for almost any ages, which has all of the elements of mystery, crime, entertainment, and action that one would expect from a thriller novel.