I’m a 23-year city cop who spends a fair amount of time around hard cases, from veteran co-workers to repeat felons. I’ve always been fascinated by formidable fictional heroes who succeed despite overwhelming odds. It’s an art to create a protagonist who is memorably and realistically resilient. I strove for this in my debut novel. The authors above delivered and then some.
Simmons’ battered PI, Joe Kurtz, is released from a ten-year stint in Attica and storms through this novel to borrow a line from the late, great Roger Ebert, “like a violent unmade bed.”
Hardcase is uncompromising, terse, drenched in noir, and not for the squeamish. Kurtz is matched up against several worthy foes, including a couple of the most memorable heavies I’ve ever read about. And the ending, well, it more than justifies the title.
Child’s Jack Reacher is a classic knight errant, strong, resourceful, and courageous who has headlined dozens of books. But this book stands out because, in the finale, he squares off with a formidable opponent with a hook for a hand.
Reacher struggles to stay conscious during this standoff because he has a woodworking nail stuck in his head, shrapnel from a shotgun blast, that is inexorably shutting down his brain and body. I will remember that passage for quite some time.
Jack Reacher hunts the hunter in the third novel in Lee Child's #1 New York Times bestselling series.
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Ex military policeman Jack Reacher is enjoying the lazy anonymity of Key West when a stranger shows up asking for him. He's got a lot of questions. Reacher does too, especially after the guy turns up dead. The answers lead Reacher on a cold trail back to New York, to the tenuous confidence of an alluring woman, and the dangerous corners of his own past.
Parker’s Spenser is a reliable tough guy with a good heart. A former soldier and heavyweight boxer, he tends to make short work of anyone foolish enough to fight him. But in Small Vices, he is shot by the villainous Gray Man and left for dead. After he’s discharged from the hospital, Spenser has to readjust to a gravely weakened body as he struggles to physically and mentally recover from his wounds.
This journey brings a new level of emotional depth to the series and lends added resonance to round two with the Gray Man, during which Spenser describes himself as Lazarus, “back from the grave to tell all.”
While probing the murder of coed Melissa Henderson, a crime in which Ellis Alves is the prime suspect, Spenser finds himself the target of an assassin and must play dead to find out who wants him off the case. 175,000 first printing. $125,000 ad/promo. BOMC Main. Reader's Digest Cond Bks.
In Mosely’s first Easy Rawlins novel, Easy is in the thick of it. He’s a war-scarred veteran living in 40s Los Angeles who has to contend with brutal racist cops and white men who wish to harm him for the sole offense of talking to a white woman. He lost his factory job, his mortgage is due, and he finds himself on shifting terrain where it’s nearly impossible to tell allies from enemies.
When the phone rings, it’s never good news. So Easy has to play it smart. Bide his time. Enlist help from his memorably violent associate, Mouse. His foes have more power, more money, and more guns and like to remind him that they’re no one to be trifled with. But then again, neither is Easy.
Devil in a Blue Dress honors the tradition of the classic American detective novel by bestowing on it a vivid social canvas and the freshest new voice in crime writing in years, mixing the hard-boiled poetry of Raymond Chandler with the racial realism of Richard Wright to explosive effect.
This book takes place in Boston during the broiling hot summer of ‘74. The protagonist of Lehane’s sublime novel is Mary Pat Fennessy, a hard-bitten mother from the Southie projects who took a look at this list of tough guys, chuckled, punched the #5 guy in the throat, and took over his spot.
Mary Pat’s teen daughter is missing, the Irish mob may know more about it than they’re letting on, and all the while, the desegregation of the public schools has turned the city into a violent racial hotbox. In Small Mercies, Mary Pat navigates searing issues of loyalty and justice. Race and grief, and as intense pressures converge on both her and the city, she responds the only way she knows how—by coming out swinging.
“Small Mercies is thought provoking, engaging, enraging, and can’t-put-it-down entertainment.” — Stephen King
The acclaimed New York Times bestselling writer returns with a masterpiece to rival Mystic River—an all-consuming tale of revenge, family love, festering hate, and insidious power, set against one of the most tumultuous episodes in Boston’s history.
In the summer of 1974 a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessy is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of “Southie,” the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to…
Kurt Argento is a former Detroit cop who hits the road to put distance between himself and a troubled past. While in a small Missouri town, he runs afoul of a corrupt local sheriff’s department and is imprisoned on false charges at a private prison. His arrival there coincides with that of Julie Wakefield, the governor’s daughter, who is taking a tour.
A breakdown in the prison’s security system lets a horde of inmates free, touching off a fierce struggle for survival as Argento helps a small band of survivors, including Julie, make their way from the bottom floor of the penitentiary to the roof to safety. Standing in their way are six floors of the most lethal convicts in the state of Missouri.
I grew up a fan of an evening news segment called “On the Road with Charles Kuralt.” Kuralt spotlighted upbeat, affirmative, sometimes nostalgic stories of people and places he discovered as he traveled across the American landscape. The charming stories he told were only part of the appeal; the freedom and adventure of being on the open road ignited a spark that continues to smolder. Some of my fondest memories from childhood are our annual family road trips, and I still jump at the chance to drive across the country.
Head West in 1865 with two life-long friends looking for adventure and who want to see the wilderness before it disappears. One is a wanderer; the other seeks a home he lost. The people they meet on their journey reflect the diverse events of this time period–settlers, adventure seekers, scientific expeditions, and Indigenous peoples–all of whom shape their lives in significant ways.
This is a story of friendship that casts a different look on a time period which often focuses only on wagon trains or gunslingers.
After four years of adventure in the frontier, Win Avery returns to his hometown on the edge of the prairie and tracks down his childhood friend, Jeb Dawson. Jeb has just lost his parents, and, in his efforts to console him, Win convinces his friend to travel west with him―to see the frontier before it is settled, while it is still unspoiled wilderness.
They embark on a free-spirited adventure, but their journey sidetracks when they befriend Meg Jameson, an accomplished horsewoman, lost on the Nebraska prairie. Traveling together through the Rocky Mountain foothills, they run into Gray Wolf, an Arapaho…
