Tuesday 22 January 2019

2 BY DAVID SWINSON

Another recent addition to the collection - author David Swinson and a couple of good looking PI novels.....























From his website ......

ABOUT DAVID SWINSON

In 1994, Swinson returned to his home base of Washington DC, where he joined the Metropolitan Police Department. Swinson began his career as a police officer in uniform. He was then assigned to the Gun Recovery Unit as a tactical officer. Shortly after that, Swinson was assigned as a plainclothes/undercover officer, targeting narcotics and crimes in progress. In 1998, Swinson was assigned to the Third District Detectives Office as an investigator, where he covered offenses ranging from burglary and armed robbery to homicide. In 2000, he was promoted to detective and was eventually assigned to the department’s Special Investigations Bureau/Major Crimes, and was the lead investigator in the District of Columbia for investigating serial burglaries, high profile cases and organized criminal operations related to narco-fencing.


After retiring from the police department, Swinson began writing crime fiction. A Detailed Man came out in 2011 followed up with The Second Girl, the first book of his Frank Marr trilogy.




Trigger his third Frank Marr novel is released early February, so I'll soon be three books behind! Four if you count his debut - A Detailed Man


The Second Girl (2016)


He's a good detective...with a bad habit.

Frank Marr knows crime in Washington, DC. A decorated former police detective, he retired early and now ekes a living as a private eye for a defense attorney. Frank Marr may be the best investigator the city has ever known, but the city doesn't know his dirty secret.

A long-functioning drug addict, Frank has devoted his considerable skills to hiding his usage from others. But after accidentally discovering a kidnapped teenage girl in the home of an Adams Morgan drug gang, Frank becomes a hero and is thrust into the spotlight. He reluctantly agrees to investigate the disappearance of another girl - possibly connected to the first - and the heightened scrutiny may bring his own secrets to light, too.

Frank is as slippery and charming an antihero as you've ever met, but he's also achingly vulnerable. The result is a mystery of startling intensity, a tightly coiled thriller where every scene may turn disastrous.

The Second Girl is the crime novel of the season and the start of a refreshing new series from an author who knows the criminal underworld inside and out.

Crime Song (2017)

David Swinson returns with a thrillingly dark novel, featuring Frank Marr, 'a masterly piece of characterisation.' (Tana French, author of The Trespasser)

Frank Marr was a good cop with a bad habit, until his addiction to cocaine forced him into retirement from the D.C. police. Now barely making a living as a private investigator, he agrees to take on a family case as a favour for his aunt.

Frank's surveillance confirms that his cousin Jeffrey is involved with a drugs operation. It seems small, until Frank's own home is burgled, leaving a body on the kitchen floor: Jeffrey. Frank's .38 revolver - the murder weapon - is stolen, along with his cherished music collection.

Clearly, his cousin was deeper in the underworld than anyone realised. With his reputation and his own life on the line, Frank searches for the real culprit: following the stolen goods through a tangled network of petty thieves, desperate addicts, deceiving fences, good cops and bad cops.

Frank's as determined to uncover the truth as he is to feed his habit, and both pursuits could prove deadly. This time, it may just be a question of what gets him first.

8 comments:

  1. Author David Swinson must bring to bear on his crime-fiction his experience in different aspects of law enforcement. Frank Marr sounds like an interesting helmsman and those are fine covers.

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    1. I guess so Prashant. Maybe not the drug use! I think the covers are very contemporary.

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  2. These sound interesting, Col. It's not easy to make an antihero work, if I can put it that way. I give credit to authors who make that sort of a person sympathetic.

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    1. Margot, I do hope to read these two soon, so I should be able to let you know.

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  3. Col – Former cops, like Swinson, have made excellent crime novelists - Joseph Wambaugh, Dan Mahoney.

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    1. Elgin, I'm familiar with Joseph Wambaugh, but not Mahoney. I'll have to look him up.

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  4. I do hope you read this soon, too, so I can find out more. Two authors in a row with books set in D.C., although from different perspectives. I do like PI novels generally.

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    1. I'm going to try and get one of these read in February, because I got access to the latest via Net Galley and I'd like to read in order if I can.

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