QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS WITH PAUL D. BRAZILL

I've been a fan of Paul's work for a few years now - short stories, flash fiction pieces and his longer efforts. A collection of shorts - The Last Laugh was enjoyed earlier this month and should be posted on soon.

In addition to his own writing, Paul is an enthusiastic supporter of a lot of under the radar writers working today via his blog/website - .pauldbrazill.com/

The man himself was kind enough to entertain a few questions from myself......

I’m guessing the writing isn’t full-time? What’s the day job?

I teach EFL (English as a Foreign Language) here in Poland. It pays the bills. Just!

How do you get from Hartlepool to Poland in 3 easy steps?

I moved from Hartlepool to London in 1991. 10 years later, I did a TEFL course- in Madrid- and got a job teaching English in Poland.

What’s been the most satisfying moment of your writing career so far?

 

It’s hardly a career! A dalliance, maybe!

Lots of nice things but when Maxim Jakubowski first accepted the Guns Of Brixton short story for inclusion in The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime, I was more than somewhat chuffed.

What’s your typical writing schedule?

I don’t have a schedule. I write as and when I can, or want to.

Do you insert family, friends and colleagues into your characters?

Oh yes. Lots of characters are based on real people. Names, conversations, anecdotes etc. come from people I know or know of. It’s easier than making things up!

Are you a plotter, or do you make it up as you go along? When you sit down to work do you know whether you’re tackling a short story or a longer piece?

I just start writing and see how and where it goes. Sometimes I’ll go back to a flash fiction piece or short story and develop it into something longer, as I did with Guns Of Brixton.

Are there any subjects off limits?

Lots and lots. The aim of my writing is to entertain, raise a chuckle with the occasional cringe. No torture porn for me, although I know that stuff sells very well indeed. I’m unlikely to top Amazon’s coveted ‘Teenage Girl Tied Up In A Basement’ chart, however.  I always think my stuff has an AA certificate, rather than an X cert.

Any unpublished gems in your bottom drawer?

Nah, I’m a bit of a tart so anything I write usually finds a home one way or another.

Is there one of your books you’re more proud of that any of the others? Which and why?

I really like the short story collection that All Due Respect put out, The Last Laugh, because it covers yarns from 2008 – when I started writing - up to 2015. There’s a nice mix of styles there, too. It’s like a Best Of LP! Only singles. But I’m shameless enough to say that I enjoy everything I’ve written! That’s why I wrote ‘em!

 

How long did Cold London Blues take from conception to completion?

It started off as a short story that I went back to and kept adding to, in dribs and drabs, but probably 6-8 months altogether.

What are the last five books you have read?

Marwick’s Reckoning by Gareth Spark

Dark Heart, Heavy Soul by Keith Nixon

The German Messenger by David Malcolm

The Deepening Shade by Jake Hinkson

The Death Of Three Colours by Jason Michel

Who do you read and enjoy?

All of the above plus Les Edgerton, Elmore Leonard, Tony Black, Graham Greene, Cathi Unsworth, Nick Quantrill, K A Laity, Nelson Algren. Lots more.

Is there any one book you wish you had written?

 

Night and the City by Gerald Kersh or Brighton Rock by Graham Greene. Or The Koran, for financial reasons only, of course. 

From regularly tuning in to your blog – you’re very supportive of a lot of under-the-radar authors – is there anyone I should be reading but aren’t? Anyone whose work you need to give a shout-out to?

The people I’ve mentioned, plus, just off the top of my head, UV Ray, Marietta Miles.

Favourite activity when not working?

Doing nowt. I’m pretty good at it, too.

What’s the current project in progress? How’s it going?

I’ve got a few on the go. One is a Warsaw / London based comedy thriller which will hopefully be the start of a series. Another is a major rewrite of the Roman Dalton novella The Neon Boneyard. Yet another is Carry On Croaking – a comic crime thriller in the style of one of the Carry On Films. And there are a couple of other things too. All are staggering along quite well.

What’s the best thing about writing?

It’s fun and I don’t have to do it. It’s for me.

The worst?

No one has given me lots of money to do it. Apart from that, nothing. It’s not working down a mine.

In a couple of years’ time…

More of the same old cobblers, I suspect!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paul D. Brazill is the author of The Last Laugh, Guns Of Brixton, A Case Of Noir, Cold London Blues, 13 Shots Of Noir, and Kill Me Quick! He was born in England and lives in Poland. He is an International Thriller Writers Inc member whose writing has been translated into Italian, German and Slovene. He has had writing published in various magazines and anthologies, including The Mammoth Books of Best British Crime. He has even edited a few anthologies, including the best-selling True Brit Grit – with Luca Veste. PAUL D. BRAZILL

PAUL D. BRAZILL Brit Grit & International Noir

DAVID PUTNAM - THE SQUANDERED (2015)

Synopsis/blurb....

The Squandered propels Bruno into an emotionally charged high-speed chase as he and Marie leave their rescued kids in Costa Rica and risk returning to the U.S. at the request of Bruno's terminally ill father. Bruno's estranged and incarcerated brother needs Bruno to help rescue his abducted young grandchildren, children that Bruno hadn't known existed. 

Bruno cannot deny his father, and Marie will not let Bruno go alone. As fugitives, they return to the U.S. to face not only imminent arrest, but also to confront ruthless kidnappers, drug dealers, and government agents who will stop at nothing to keep a secret from the past buried forever. 

Glimpses of Bruno's law enforcement past shed light on the mayhem they encounter once they are discovered in L.A. It seems that Bruno's brother, Noble, has inadvertently kicked a hornet's nest of criminals, both in and out of prison, and among various law enforcement agencies looking to find a long missing load of nine million dollars' worth of cocaine. And Noble's grandchildren are caught in the cross-hairs. 

The chase, the brutality, and the emotional stress tests Bruno and Marie's relationship and forces them to define family, a what's okay to forgive, and what should never be forgotten. Armed with a new moral code, will they live long enough to put it into practice?

The third book in David Putnam's Bruno Johnson series and another fast-paced romp.

Johnson risks his and partner Marie's freedom when returning to the States from Costa Rica again, in order to help his brother's family. A brother he hasn't seen for 25 years or so, the brother he helped imprison back when he was a cop.

Noble Johnson's grandchildren have been kidnapped and Bruno's the man to get them back.

I liked the book overall, though a fraction less maybe than the earlier books in the series.
Putnam's characters are convincing and you can feel the passion and love Bruno has for Marie, his father and his "adopted" children.

We get more of his back-story and how a childhood friend became a brother. A brother that made some bad choices and took a wrong turn in life - but now has put aside the bitterness of the years and reached out to Bruno. Can he be trusted or is Bruno getting played?

Kidnapped kids, love of family, forgiveness, California's drug Kingpin, rogue cops, an old gangster feud, a stash of diamonds, missing coke, jail-time, old enemies resurfacing, jeopardy, a true-crime best selling book, assistance from some old friends and more........ all leading up to a satisfying resolution with a twist.

Plenty of action to go with the more thoughtful moments regarding love and family. Slight suspension of disbelief at a few of the situations Bruno and Marie found themselves in and got themselves out of - though no out and out flying pig moments.

Overall I was entertained and was keen to see how things got resolved.

4 from 5

The earlier books in the series have been read and enjoyed - The Disposables and The Replacements.

There's a fourth book out early next year - The Vanquished.

Dave Putnam has his website here.

The author was kind enough to send me a copy for review.

DANIEL VLASATY - ONLY BONES (2016)

Synopsis/blurb......

Daniel is a bike messenger in Chicago. He’s good at his job and takes pride in his work. In his riding. In the fact that he knows the city’s streets like the back of his hand. Daniel’s also in debt to his drug dealer, Lawrence. And when he’s offered a job to work off his debt Daniel doesn’t hesitate. It’ll be an easy job, Lawrence tells him. Just running packages. 

But Daniel’s about to learn that things are never easy. 

Not in this city.

A wild 130-odd page road trip around Chicago's streets in the company of incessant pill-popping bike messenger, Daniel. Daniel pops pills like the rest of us breathe air.

Unfortunately racing around town on a bike doesn't earn you enough to pay your dealer, even if you don't do alcohol and your addiction has stunted your appetite for food. Daniel's forced to make a drug run for his dealer Lawrence to square his account. Things can't get any worse can they?

Err, yes they can.

Elf - Lawrence's supplier is a total psycho with a crazy gang of flunkies - not that he'd need them to kick Daniel's butt. Then after you've met the connection, its probably best if you don't get followed back to your dealer and shaken down by the two dirtiest cops in Chicago - Rick and Pauley.

Pauley looks at me the way a cop looks at anyone he sees as beneath him. Which is pretty much everyone who isn't a cop.

While Daniel's not exactly deserving of our sympathy, Vlasaty shows us some of the origins of his life path. When Pauley makes him empty his pockets he finds Daniel's knife.....

It's not a true switchblade. Just a spring-loaded knife.

The only thing my old man ever taught me before he split was to always carry a knife.

That a man always has a blade on him.

I remember him stabbing some dude in a Jewel parking lot right around then. Something about a stolen girlfriend. His or the other guy's. I'm not sure. I was seven years old.

I don't say anything to Pauley.

Lawrence's stash gets pinched by the dirty duo and he suffers a beating. Elf's none too happy, it's not the first time his customers have been hit. Lawrence is positively raging and after a business meeting with Elf, retribution is planned......and Daniel's in over his head and unfortunately along for the ride.

Memorable, harsh and devoid of hope. Excellent stuff from Vlasaty.

4.5 from 5

Daniel Vlasaty has his website here.
Catch him on Twitter - @DanielVlasaty

Thanks to publisher All Due Respect for my copy of this one. Their website is here.

Read September, 2016

2 BY GARRY DISHER

2 from one of my favourite Australian authors - Garry Disher

Disher has written across many genres - children's books, YA books, non-fiction, short stories, general/literary fiction in addition to his crime fiction.





















He has two interesting series of books. One concerns Wyatt - a professional criminal. The other comes at things from the police side of the fence - his Inspector Hal Challis series.

I've read a few of the Wyatt novels, most recently the latest - The Heat.

Hal Challis has yet to be enjoyed.

Garry Disher has a website here.













Port Vila Blues (1995)

Wyatt snatches the cash easily enough. He bypasses the alarm system, eludes the cops, makes it safely back to his bolthole in Hobart.It's the diamond-studded Tiffany brooch - and perhaps the girl - that brings him undone. Now some very hard people want to put Wyatt and that brooch out of circulation.But this is Wyatt's game and Wyatt sets the rules - even if it means a reckoning somewhere far from home.Port Vila Blues is Wyatt's fifth heist. It's faster than ever, racing towards the inevitable confrontation on a clifftop above the deceptively calm waters of Port Vila Bay.

"In a murky world where the cops are robbers, old-style crim Wyatt positively shines. Clear taut writing - not a word wasted." Marele Day

"...tough, violent, relentless and thoroughly convincing" Stuart Coupe

Snapshot (2006)

It had taken months for Janine McQuarrie to succumb to her husband's pressure to have sex with strangers at suburban spouse-swapping parties. But after attending a few such events on the Mornington Peninsula, this Australian social psychologist rebels. And then, driving with her young daughter one day, she gets out of her car to ask directions from another driver, is killed. The little girl escapes when the gunman's pistol misfires.

Inspector Hal Challis, to whose Crime Investigation Unit the case falls, is thwarted in his efforts by his boss. The dead woman was Superintendent McQuarrie's daughter-in-law. He seems to be more interested in protecting his son than in finding his daughter-in-law's murderer. Who might have a motive to kill this attractive young wife and mother? One of her clients? One of the swingers she'd gotten together with at a party? Or, the obvious suspect, her husband? The villain turns out to be someone Challis never would have expected.

LOGGING THE LIBRARY - PART EIGHTY-FOUR

Tub 84 this week and on the home stretch I think - I might reach 90, I might not.

TUB 84!

Adam Hall, Carl Hiaasen, Edward Bunker, Rory Flynn, Simon Armitage, 

Edward Bunker - posthumously published

Ex-con. Author. Actor. Legend. Edward Bunker is one of the acknowledged masters of crime fiction. Written in the late 1960's and discovered after Bunker's death in 2005, Stark is his first and perhaps his most explosive novel ever.

1962. Oceanview, California. The girls are beautiful. The dope is cheap. The squares here are ripe for the plucking--easy money for a man with a plan. Ernie Stark is a hophead and a grifter out to make a big score. If he has to screw over everyone in town, he will. The problem is one more misstep will find him locked up for good.Violent, lightening paced and exotic, filed with the most wonderful cast of lowlifes you'll ever meet and dialogue that crackles, this is the lost novel for mystery lovers everywhere and the legion of fans of the legendary Edward Bunker.

Jake Arnott, Gar Anthony Haywood, Boris Starling, Christopher Wilson, Neil Cross, 

Crap photo - interesting book!

The Ballad of Lee Cotton (2005)
(Cotton)
A novel by Christopher Wilson

From his Icelandic father Lee Cotton gets his marble skin and blue eyes. From his mixed-race mother he gains his black identity. From his Mambo grandmother he inherits forebodings about his future. It's a combination that sets Lee apart from the other black kids growing up in Eureka, Mississippi. It marks Lee out as slightly odd. And very white. If childhood was confusing, adolescence proves life changing when Lee falls in love with the sublime Angelina. It's also life threatening: Angel's father is a freelance shooter for the Klan, who doesn't take kindly to his daughter's boyfriend. An act of appalling violence leaves Lee far from home with a new identity, a draft card, a memory that operates in flashback and a mental illness that makes him a sort of genius. He also has a reputation, back home, for being dead. Nobody (except possibly his grandmother) could envisage that Lee's rebirth is a headstart and not a handicap. His role in a quite remarkable journey through life will be to transform others as he has transformed himself...

Neil Cross, Chris Simms, Alan Furst, Andrew Vachss, Oonagh O'Hagan, 

Andrew Vachss - short stories!

A chilling collection of tales chronicles the stories of a stalker prowling an urban high-rise, a serial killer whose crimes reflect a childhood of abuse, and an inner-city gunman willing to destroy any number of victims to achieve a moment of acceptance.

Colin Bateman, Ian Sansom, Russell James, Ryan Gatiss, Neville Thompson (edited),

Stories from an Irish Prison!

Every day the population of Ireland wakes up to reports of another horror case of crime. The streets have become unsafe to walk upon and yet nothing seems to be done about it. Politicians make noises voicing their disgust while the police make arrests only to have the perpetrators walk free. Despite all the media hype, no one seems to be any nearer to solving the problem.Streetwise reveals what is really happening on the streets. The stories contained here are told by prisoners: those who have been involved in crime and are now paying their debt to society, allowing the reader to enter the minds of criminals and begin to understand the circumstances behind their actions. Meet Chang, who started joyriding at eight years old and was infamous among police and legendary among fellow law-breakers by the age of 12; Mucka, a once saintly schoolboy who was abandoned by both his family and society so took to robbing as a form of revenge; PJ, man of the house and breadwinner at 11, alcoholic by 12; and Tommy, the divorc who was refused social welfare so robbed the Co-op of a million Euros and soon found the local wing of the IRA knocking at his door. An exhilarating, emotional roller coaster, Street Wise contains frank accounts from those who have succumbed to crime through boredom, poverty or desperation. It shows how men from different backgrounds have fallen into similar crime traps and what has finally placed them on the path to redemption.

Russell James

When a young woman is gruesomely murdered, her friend and fellow reporter Kirsty Rice feels bound to investigate. Just as Kirsty enters the murky world of call-girls, porn and Internet sex, she discovers that she is pregnant. Despite his unconvincing denials, Kirsty is shocked to discover that the father of her unborn child is involved with the pornographers. Did he know about the killing? And how far was he mixed up with London's infamous Miller family? No One Gets Hurt is a tense and powerful thriller, hurtling from a truly shocking opening to an even more shattering climax.

Hans Fallada, Conrad Williams, Daniel Silva, Pall Thomas, Gavin Lyall, 

New Zealand Crime!

Tito Ihaka, the unkempt, overweight Maori cop, was demoted to Sergeant due to insubordination and pigheadedness. He investigates the unsolved killing of a seventeen-year-old girl at an election night party in a ritzy villa near Auckland. Ihaka is also embroiled in a very personal mystery. A freelance journalist has stumbled across information that Ihaka's father, Jimmy, a trade union firebrand and renegade Marxist, didn't die of natural causes. The stories weave themselves into an exciting climax in an atmosphere of political maneuvering and intrigue surrounding the United States' confrontation with New Zealand over its anti-nuclear stance.

Martina Cole, James McClure, Graham Hurley, Gavin Lyall, Walter Mosley, 

T. Jefferson Parker, Peter Robinson x 2, Val McDermid, John LeCarre, 

Debut novel from 1985 - T' Jefferson Parker!

Laguna...
Where every day the sun makes a promise the nighttime breaks, while the super-rich live out expensive fantasies in posh beach houses and drown their memories in Cuervo Gold margaritas...

Laguna...
Where trouble has swept in like a Santa Ana wind, blowing the cover off a world of torture, murder and blood-red secrets

Laguna...
Where a crazed killer has turned paradise into a Disneyland of depraved violance--with a fiery vengeance--and where homicide cop Tom Shephard unravels a grisly mystery that reaches back across forty years of sordid sex, blackmail, and suicide into the dark corners of his own past, and sweats out a deadly truth in the sweltering..

Laguna Heat

S. J. Rozan, Marcus Sakey, Richard Stark, Ben Richards, Michael Symmons Roberts, 

Westlake AKA Stark - the last Parker - no.24!

 "[One] of the greatest writers of the twentieth century...Richard Stark, real name Donald Westlake...His Parker books form a genre all their own."
--John Banville, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea

Master criminal Parker takes another turn for the worse as he tries to recover loot from a heist gone terribly wrong. In Nobody Runs Forever, Parker and two cohorts stole the assets of a bank in transit, but the police heat was so great they could only escape if they left the money behind. In this follow-up novel, Parker and his associates plot to reclaim the loot, which they hid in the choir loft of an unused country church. As they implement the plan, people on both sides of the law use the forces at their command to stop Parker and grab the goods for themselves. Though Parker's new getaway van is an old Ford Econoline with "Holy Redeemer Choir" on its doors, his gang is anything but holy, and Parker will do whatever it takes to redeem his prize, no matter who gets hurt in the process.

Bill Pronzini x 2.5, Marcia Muller x 0.5, Dick Francis, Mike Ripley, 

Husband and wife - tag-team Nameless mystery - no. 13!

The "Nameless Detective" and Sharon McCone join forces at a San Diego private detective convention to investigate a case involving multiple murder, a crime ring dealing in smuggled fugitives, and bizarre, kinky lifestyles.

Cathi Unsworth, Tim Willocks, Howard Jacobson, Jesmyn Ward, Natsuo Kirino, 

Jesmyn Ward - non-fiction!

"We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped." -Harriet Tubman

In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life-to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write about the experience of living through all the dying, she realized the truth-and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships. Jesmyn says the answer was so obvious she felt stupid for not seeing it. But it nagged at her until she knew she had to write about her community, to write their stories and her own.

Jesmyn grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi. She writes powerfully about the pressures this brings, on the men who can do no right and the women who stand in for family in a society where the men are often absent. She bravely tells her story, revisiting the agonizing losses of her only brother and her friends. As the sole member of her family to leave home and pursue higher education, she writes about this parallel American universe with the objectivity distance provides and the intimacy of utter familiarity. A brutal world rendered beautifully, Jesmyn Ward's memoir will sit comfortably alongside Edwidge Danticat's Brother, I'm Dying, Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life, and Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Tub 84 put to bed!

HIGHLIGHTS..... Edward Bunker, Colin Bateman, Richard Stark, Rory Flynn, Carl Hiaasen, Bill Pronzini, Andrew Vachss

LOWLIGHTS...... nothing too uninteresting, though the HANS FALLADA book isn't singing out to me.

FULL LIST OF 50 AS FOLLOWS:

AUTHOR		TITLE	YEAR	SERIES
ARMITAGE	SIMON	LITTLE GREEN MAN	2001
ARNOTT	JAKE	JOHNNY COME HOME	2006
BATEMAN	COLIN	DIVORCING JACK	1995	DS1
BUNKER	EDWARD	STARK	2007
COLE	MARTINA	THE JUMP	1995
CROSS	NEIL	HOLLOWAY FALLS	2003
CROSS	NEIL	ALWAYS THE SUN	2004
FALLADA	HANS	ALONE IN BERLIN	1947
FLYNN	RORY	THIRD RAIL	2014	EH1
FRANCIS	DICK	UNDER ORDERS	2006	SH4
FURST	ALAN	THE POLISH OFFICER	1995	NS3
GATTIS	RYAN	ROO KICKKICK AND THE BID BAD BLIMP	2004
HALL	ADAM	QUILLER BARRACUDA	1990	Q14
HAYWOOD	GAR ANTHONY	IT'S NOT A PRETTY SIGHT	1996	AGM4
HIAASEN	CARL	STORMY WEATHER	1995	S3
HURLEY	GRAHAM	BLOOD AND HONEY	2006	F+W6
JACOBSON	HOWARD	IN THE LAND OF OZ	1987
JAMES	RUSSELL	NO ONE GETS HURT	2003
KIRINO	NATSUO	OUT	2003
LE CARRE	JOHN	THE NAÏVE AND SENTIMENTAL LOVER	1971
LYALL	GAVIN	THE SECRET SERVANT	1980	HM1
LYALL	GAVIN	THE CONDUCT OF MAJOR MAXIM	1982	HM2
McCLURE	JAMES	THE STEAM PIG	1971	K+Z1
McDERMID	VAL	THE GRAVE TATTOO	2006
MOSLEY	WALTER	BLUE LIGHT	1998
O'HAGAN	OONAGH	I LICK MY CHEESE	2007
PARKER	T. JEFFERSON	LAGUNA HEAT	1985
PRONZINI	BILL	QUARRY	1991	N19
PRONZINI	BILL	BREAKDOWN	1991	N18
PRONZINI/MULLER	BILL/MARCIA	DOUBLE	1984	N13
RICHARDS	BEN	THROWING THE HOUSE OUT OF THE WINDOW	1996
RIPLEY	MIKE	JUST ANOTHER ANGEL	1988	FMA1
ROBINSON	PETER	PAST REASON HATED	1991	IB5
ROBINSON	PETER	FRIEND OF THE DEVIL	2007	IB17
ROZAN	S. J.	BLOOD RITES	2001	BS+LC7
SAKEY	MARCUS	THE TWO DEATHS OF DANIEL HAYES	2011
SANSOM	IAN	RING ROAD	2004
SILVA	DANIEL	THE UNLIKELY SPY	1996
SIMMS	CHRIS	SHIFTING SKIN	2006	DIJS2
STARK	RICHARD	DIRTY MONEY	2008	P24
STARLING	BORIS	VISIBILITY	2006
SYMMONS ROBERTS	MICHAEL	PATRICK'S ALPHABET	2006
THOMAS	PAUL	FALLOUT	2015	TI5
THOMPSON	NEVILLE	STREETWISE (ed.)	2004
UNSWORTH	CATHI	THE NOT KNOWING	2005
VACHSS	ANDREW	BORN BAD	1986
WARD	JESMYN	MEN WE REAPED	2013
WILLIAMS	CONRAD	DUST AND DESIRE	2015	JS1
WILLOCKS	TIM	BLOODSTAINED KINGS	1995
WILSON	CHRISTOPHER	THE BALLAD OF LEE COTTON	2005

E. MICHAEL HELMS - DEADLY DUNES (2015)

Synopsis/blurb.......

Hours after hiring Mac McClellan to investigate the supposed suicide of her archaeologist brother, single-mom Jessie dies in a car accident. Jessie had just showed Mac artifacts and a copy of a map Jake found, items that indicate Hernando de Soto and his explorers might have camped on Five Mile Island during the winter of 1539-1540. Studying the map, Mac determines the site lies in the middle of a planned resort, The Dunes. Declaring the area an historic site could shut the project down. Suspicions aroused, he forges ahead, even though he no longer has a paying client. 

Everywhere Mac turns, greed abounds, and no one he interviews seems innocent, even Jessie's closest friends the Deckers, who have adopted her teenage daughter. Ron Decker's construction company is building the Dunes, and he is heavily invested in its success. Then there is the oily son and ex-stripper wife of an old curmudgeon who won't sell the one lot the project still needs to acquire. Jake's estranged wife Laurel had plenty to gain from his death, and as Mac continues to dig, he begins to wonder if Jessie herself had more at stake than he was led to believe. 

No one is happy about Mac's persistence, and someone is unhappy enough to crash his truck and frame him for yet another murder. But Mac isn't giving up, no matter what the cost. 

Book 3 in the Mac McClellan Mystery series.

My third time with author E. Michael Helms and his series character, ex-career soldier, turned PI, Mac McLellan.  The first two in the series, Deadly Catch and Deadly Ruse were enjoyed before.

Mac is entrusted by boss Frank Hightower with his first case - a grieving sister is unconvinced by her brother's recent death being written off as suicide. Mac is hired to look into things. The background being that the recently deceased Jake was an archaeologist and he claimed to have discovered some historic artifacts that could put a proposed property development in doubt.

A day after he signs on, his client dies in a freak automobile accident. Unwilling to believe in such an unlikely occurrence being accidental, Mac without a client and against the wishes of his boss has himself a murder, possibly two to investigate.

With a massive resort development and money to be made, or conversely money to be lost if the site gets closed down - profit or ruin can provide a powerful motive for murder. Mac's inquiries throw up a few candidates and reveal some secrets of a personal nature when he digs into our dead siblings - Jessie and Jake's extended families. I needed a wall chart to keep track of the bedroom shenanigans, something Helms chooses to allude to as opposed to graphically depict. Who did what to whom and when and what consequences subsequently transpired.

There's a few memorable characters encountered along the way. Amos Moats is an eccentric and the last hold-out refusing to sell his land to the developers. When Mac persuades hims to put down the shotgun long enough for a chat, he discovers Moats' ex-stripper wife left him for his own son - a sleazy lawyer. Fair play to her though, she does drop by once a month to do her wifely duty!

Mac away from the case, has his blossoming romance with girlfriend Kate still burning bright - and there's just the right amount of personal thrown into the tale to keep it fresh and interesting. The banter between the pair adds to the story.

Overall - interesting, enjoyable and engaging. Plenty to like here - decent story, likable main characters, action, humour and a decent resolution. Plenty of legs in Helms' Mac McLellan yet.

4 from 5

E. Michael Helms has a website here.
He's on Twitter - @EMichaelHelms

Michael has appeared on the blog previously, answering a few questions here.

Read in September, 2016

My copy of Deadly Dunes was provided by the publisher Camel Press - thanks!

AUGUST 2016 - READING LIST AND PICK OF THE MONTH

Eight books read in the month, which I'm fairly happy with. Ideally I would have liked to have hit the 10 mark, but I was sufficiently advanced with 2 of my part-reads to be able to mark up 2 on the 1st day of September.

The eight were.........

Frank Bill - Crimes in Southern Indiana (2011) (4.5)

Dave Warner  - City of Light (1995) (4)

A. R. Arrington - Mirage Colorado: Road to Redemption (2016) (4)

V. H. Leslie - Bodies of Water (2016) (4)

Adam Maxwell - The Dali Deception (2016) (4)

Luca Veste - It Never Leaves You (2016) (4)

Iain Ryan - Drainland (2016) (4.5)

Douglas Skelton - Blood City (2013) (5)


I did also read 31 varying short stories in the month - see here.

Book of the Month  Well one 5 star read and an obvious pick of the month - Douglas Skelton's Blood City, 

Of the rest - 2 reads at 4.5 and 5 rating 4 stars 

A bit more trivia or data........

4 of the 8 were new-to-me authors, 4 have been read before - Douglas Skelton, Luca Veste, Adam Maxwell and Iain Ryan.

No surprises here - 7 dudes, only 1 dudess - V. H. Leslie. (Same as last month.)

2 authors hail from the US, 2 from Australia, 2 from England, 1 from Scotland, 1 from Britain (I can't get any more specific than that!)

All 8 reads were fiction.

4 were paperback reads, 3 were Kindle editions, 1 was an audio book.

7 from this decade - 2 from this year. 1 from the 1990s.

3 of the 8 books were pre-owned, though 1 was a recent Amazon Freebie, 2 were kindly sent by the authors, 2 were sent to me by publishers - Robot Ronin Press and Salt Publishing and 1 from my local library.

Favourite cover? Crimes in Southern Indiana by some distance.

Total page count = 1822


1 < 50,
1 between 51 < 100,
1 between 101 < 200,
2 between 201 < 300,
2 between 301 < 400,
1 > 400 pages  - 406 Dave Warner's City of Light.