2 BY MICHAEL SIMON

Another author on the shelves that I haven't yet tried - Michael Simon. I bought all 4 in the series after initially reading something about the first - Dirty Sally, which caught my eye.

All 4 were recent additions to the piles late last year.

Looking at the dates of his books, I do wonder why he has been quiet for the past 7 years, at least in terms of new books.


Michael Simon hails from Long Island and is a former actor and playwright, having previously worked in Texas as a probation officer. His website is here.






Dan Reles
1. Dirty Sally (2004)
2. Body Scissors (2005)
3. Little Faith (2006)
4. The Last Jew Standing (2007)











Body Scissors

Set in the oil bust days of late 1980s Texas, Michael Simon's explosive debut, Dirty Sally, introduced readers to Detective Dan Reles, Austin Homicide's only New Yorker and its only Jew. In Body Scissors, a brand-new decade brings a new criminal web of intrigue and violence for Dan to untangle.

It's January 1991, and as America watches the bombs drop on Iraq at the start of Desert Storm, a botched assassination attempt on Virginia Key, a rising black community leader, captures the attention of the local press. With one of Key's children in a coma and the other dead, Dan is eager to investigate. That is, until department politics bump him off the case.

Meanwhile, several affluent white college kids fall comatose and doctors are frantic to find an explanation. As a bizarre chain of events puts Dan on the trail of a psychotic drug dealer with a broad network of influence and a hit list (featuring Dan's name prominently), Dan is certain he can catch the dealer and break the case wide open - unless the dealer gets to Dan first. A violent and thrilling adventure ride, Body Scissors confirms Michael Simon as the next big talent in hard-boiled crime fiction.


The Last Jew Standing

Will detective Dan Reles arrest his own father . . . or will the mob find him first?

Lieutenant Dan Reles has a new house, a wife, and a son, and a great career as head of Austin Homicide, but it's funny how your past catches up with you. When Dan's deadbeat father Ben Reles, a Mafia legbreaker who's spent the last twenty years on the run, shows up on Dan's doorstep with an escaped prostitute in tow, trouble is sure to follow.


That trouble is Sam Zelig, a sociopathic godfather with limitless resources and boundless rage. In several diabolical strokes, he now holds Austin hostage, forcing Dan to choose between the town he's sworn to protect, his new family, and his father. In the process he faces trial by fire, bullet, bridge embankment, and one very angry woodchipper. Sure to satisfy Simon's core devotees as well as fans of Dennis Lehane and James Ellroy, Last Jew Standing is fastpaced and suspenseful from start to finish.