The story takes place in two timelines. In the sequel timeline, Chris Shiherlis (played by Val Kilmer in the film), the sole-surviving member of Neil McCauley's robbery crew, has escaped Los Angeles after the events of Heat and eventually finds himself in the employ of a South American crime family. In the prequel timeline, set in 1988 Chicago, Vincent Hanna investigates a deadly home invasion while Neil McCauley and his crew are coincidentally in town to take down a safety deposit vault.
Contains examples of the following tropes:
- All for Nothing: The heist in Mexicali ends with Elisa dead and Wardell taking off with Neil's score, totaling $12 million.
- Anachronism Stew:
- In the 1988 timeline, Hanna uses a whiteboard to chart his investigation at the police station. Whiteboards, while invented in the mid '70s, didn't come into widespread use until the early 1990s.
- Also in the 1988 timeline, Wardell's would-be victim Becky Colson drives a Volvo 940, which wouldn't be introduced for another two years.
- Antagonist in Mourning: The book opens with Neil's death still weighing heavily on Vincent, and even five years later Vincent realizes that he can't shake his obsession with Neil even though his entire crew are (apparently) dead.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: Chris is able to immediately peg Scott Terry, the Lius' would-be customer, as an imposter by noticing minute imperfections in his passport, his apparent unfamiliarity with certain subjects, and the fact that he won't take his hands off his travel bag.
- Bald of Evil: Wardell has a shaved head. Alex sitting behind him before the home invasion is described as like looking at a cannonball.
- Back Story: We learn not just the backgrounds of Vincent and Neil in the flashbacks to 1988 (including their respective tours in Vietnam), as well as the relationships they had in their lives, but we also learn about Chris' backstory and how he met Charlene when she was a call girl in Las Vegas.
- Bazaar of the Bizarre: The Liu family operate an entire shopping center in Ciudad del Estes specializing in the trade of stolen or counterfeit merchandise, with no regulation or legal hinderance whatsoever.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: A variation; the Liu family ends up taking Chris in because when the patriarch of the family was in prison with Nate, Nate protected him from harm.
- Big Bad: Otis Wardell, a sociopathic home invader and rapist who shows up in both the 1988 and 2000 timelines.
- Big Damn Heroes: Chris ends up rescuing Gabriela when she's being chased by Wardell in the 2000 timeline.
- The Bus Came Back:
- Kelso, the wheelchair-bound computer expert played by Tom Noonan in the film, comes back as a cybersecurity guy for Chris' new employers.
- Although Vincent is still divorced from Justine, in the 2000 timeline he still keeps up with Lauren, who's now in high school and a budding artist.
- The Caper: Just like in the movie, the plot has two:
- Neil's crew visit Chicago to take down a safety deposit vault by way of The Convenient Store Next Door, which ultimately leads them to...
- A counting room inside a disused motel in Mexicali where millions in drug money is collected by the local cartel, which the crew decides to raid.
- Character Development: While skilled at what he does, Chris was easily the most short-tempered of Neil's crew in the original film. In the book, the experience of being separated from his family and living in exile in Paraguay forces him to mellow out. This helps him mature enough to the point that he decides to leave Charlene and Dominick alone when he sees that they're living a happy life without him.
- Contrived Coincidence: The final segment of the book hinges on the fact that Chris is back in Los Angeles on business just as Wardell (having settled there after the Mexicali heist) is going back to his home invasion routine. There is also the fact that Wardell and his new crew eat at a diner where their waitress just so happens to be the now-grown Gabriela.
- The Convenient Store Next Door: How Neil's crew accesses the safety deposit vault.
- Covers Always Lie: Similar to the DVD re-release, the Los Angeles skyline is prominently featured on the cover, implying it's the central setting like the original film. In fact, huge chunks of the book are set very far away from L.A., in places as disparate as Chicago and Paraguay.
- Covert Distress Code: When she's kidnapped by Wardell, Elisa sends one of these both to Neil and then to Gabriela, to let Neil know something's happened to her and to get Gabriela to escape unseen.
- Expy: Otis Wardell is this of Waingro: a repulsive, unstable, irredeemable bastard who causes chaos everywhere he goes and who is pitted against both Hanna (who is pursuing him) and McCauley (whose score Wardell wants to take for himself).
- Info Dump: The six-page prologue of the novel sums up the events of Heat.
- It's All My Fault: Neil blames himself for Elisa getting killed by Wardell; he feels if she hadn't been involved with him, Wardell wouldn't have been able to kidnap and kill her. This is why, by the time Heat takes place, Neil has vowed not to let himself have any attachments, and also probably why he abandoned Eady when he saw Vincent chasing after him - he didn't want the same thing to happen to her.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Even though Chris had always planned to reunite with Charlene and Dominick, when he sees them with her new boyfriend, he decides to let Charlene have her own life, and return to Ana and her family instead.
- The Lost Lenore:
- Vincent lost his first wife when she descended into alcoholism following repeated miscarriages, which resulted in her death in a car accident. Despite being a womanizer, he hasn't really gotten over it.
- Neil loses Elisa when she is kidnapped and killed by Otis Wardell, which leads to him committing to the philosophy of forgoing all attachments so that it never happens again.
- Mythology Gag:
- Chris' alias in Paraguay is "Jeffrey Bergman", a portmanteau of the two main characters from Mann's The Insider.
- In Heat, Neil tells Eady about wanting to go to Fiji to see algae that glow in the dark in the water. In the book, we find out Gabriela, the daughter of Neil's then-girlfriend Elisa, told him about this from a book she read.
- Police Are Useless: The Chicago Police is hopelessly mired in corrupt politics, and Hanna laments how his superiors care more about "greasing the machine: Cook County, city hall, the CPD brass, or the Outfit machine" than catching vicious criminals like Wardell.
- Rabid Cop: Hanna becomes this even more so than he was in the movie as he becomes obsessed with pursuing Wardell, to the point of throwing Alex off a six-story roof.
- Spot the Thread: Among the many red flags Chris picks up about Scott Terry is how he misidentifies the prison gang controlling territory near the Tex-Mex border, not knowing that a common nickname for Fort Bragg within the military is "Fayette-nam", and not knowing that Army Rangers are trained at Fort Benning instead of Fort Bragg.
- The Unfavorite: Ana Liu, Chris' new love interest, is very cunning and has a keen understanding of emerging economic conditions, but her patriarchal father has passed her over in favor of her hard-partying brother.
- Wicked Cultured: We learn that Neil's personal philosophies came about after reading Albert Camus while he was in prison.
- Wretched Hive: Ciudad del Estes, Paraguay, is depicted as a "free market zone" with no formal regulation or law enforcement whatsoever, making the city a haven for gangsters, smugglers, dealers, money launderers, and all other sorts of criminals. Chris' new employers, the Liu family, operate a shopping mall where stolen or counterfeit goods are openly sold.
