Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: While the Getting Is Good by Matt Riordan

 

While the Getting Is Good by Matt Riordan (Hyperion Avenue, 26 August 2025) is an immersive piece of historical crime fiction. Set in 1932 in the waning days of Prohibition and the depths of the Great Depression, Eldridge Mackey is scraping by as a herring fisherman in the small town of Minden on the eastern side of Michigan. He is worried about his family’s future, short- and long-term, especially his son’s, who Eld believes deserves more than the hard life of a fisherman. Gangsters from Detroit arranged with him and several of his neighbors to cross Lake Huron to Ontario and fill their boats with Canadian whiskey for the hoodlums and their customers. Rumors that liquor would soon be legal again made the mobsters anxious to squeeze as much money as possible from the illicit booze before this lucrative revenue stream dried up.

Canadian whiskey producers began to stockpile their wares for sale on the open market to be ready when Prohibition ended, and two gangs squabbled over the shrinking amounts of contraband available. Eld and his friends got caught in the crossfire. The family was shattered, leaving them to start new lives in new locations.

Like Whiskey River by Loren Estleman, one of my all-time favorite crime fiction books, While the Getting Is Good demonstrates that whiskey-smuggling gangsters may have been on top of the world for awhile but inevitably their worlds crashed and everyone around them suffered by association. About half of the book is about Eld’s wife Maggie and how she managed to survive when they were forced to separate. Befriended by the sister of the gangster who lost the Canadian whiskey fight, the two of them team up against the world, making the only choices available to them for their survival which were not great and they eventually encountered the consequences. Maggie is worth a book all her own.

I had trouble putting this action-filled narrative down. The structure of the story with its disrupted chronology, which I generally dislike, is original and compelling, although not completely successful. To me the ending is off: either the story stopped too soon or it went on too long. The point at which it ended feels wrong. Otherwise I found it a great read if dark and sad. Recommended.

 

·                     Publisher: ‎Hyperion Avenue

·                     Publication date: ‎August 26, 2025

·                     Language: ‎English

·                     Print length: ‎336 pages

·                     ISBN-10: ‎1368101453

·                     ISBN-13: ‎978-1368101455

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/45zb8uy

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2025 

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.