A bit of choice - Elmore Leonard with a few to choose from - City Primeval, 52 Pick-up; Loren D. Estleman and his Amos Walker series, or Bill Morris and Motor City Burning
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| Bill Morris - Motor City Burning (2014) |
From the critically acclaimed author of Motor City, Detroit comes alive in a powerful and thrilling novel set amid the chaos of the 1960s race riots and the serenity of baseball's opening day.
Willie Bledsoe, once an idealistic young black activist, is now a burnt-out case. After leaving a snug berth at Tuskegee Institute to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he has become bitterly disillusioned with the civil rights movement and its leaders. He returns home to Alabama to try to write a memoir about his time in the cultural whirlwind, but the words fail to come.
The surprise return of his Vietnam veteran brother in the spring of 1967 gives Willie a chance to drive a load of smuggled guns to the Motor City - and make enough money to jump-start his stalled dream of writing his memoir. There, at Tiger Stadium on Opening Day of the 1968 baseball season - postponed two days in deference to the funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr. - Willie learns some terrifying news: the Detroit police are still investigating the last unsolved murder from the bloody, apocalyptic riot of the previous summer, and a white cop named Frank Doyle will not rest until the case is solved. And Willie is his prime suspect.
Bill Morris' rich and thrilling novel sets Doyle's hunt amid the history of one of America's most tortured and fascinating cities, as Doyle and Willie struggle with Detroit's deep racial divide, with revenge and forgiveness, and with the realization that justice is rarely attainable - and rarely just.
D is for.....
Garry Disher, top banana Aussie author with a couple of series under his belt - one with cops, one with a professional criminal, and a whole host of stand-alones.....
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| Garry Disher - Kickback (1991) |
Professional, methodical and only slightly sentimental, Wyatt is a flinty poem of a criminal and one of the most memorable creations in modern Australian literature.
Wyatt plans to hit a suburban law firm for the settlement money in its safe. But he’s working with cowboys, and the lawyer planning to rip off her boss is a little too mysterious for his comfort. Wyatt’s as good as they come, but everything needs to go like clockwork—and you can’t always plan around human frailty.
This is the perfect introduction to an exquisite series: hard-boiled Melbourne in the time of video rentals and answering machines, paper money, Datsuns and Customlines. It’s as sinewy and efficient as Wyatt himself, superbly crafted and relentlessly tense. And it gets even better from here.
In 2000, Kickback won the international section of the Deutscher Krimi Preis, the oldest and most prestigious German literary prize for crime fiction.
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| Garry Disher - The Dragon Man (1999) |
"Engaging and appealingly complex."-Canberra Times
"Pace and tautness . . . Evocative landscapes-characters develop complexity and lodge in the consciousness."-Weekend Australian
"Disher writes a mean crime thriller."-The Age
A serial killer is on the loose in a small coastal town near Melbourne. Detective Inspector Hal Challis and his team must apprehend him before he strikes again. But first Challis must contend with the editor of a local news-paper who undermines his investigation at every turn and with his wife, who is attempting to resurrect their marriage through long-distance phone calls from a sanitarium where she has been imprisoned for the past eight years for attempted murder. His.
The media is demanding to know what Challis is doing about the killer; his colleagues are either giving trouble or in it; and his past keeps coming back to haunt him. Can Challis and his team nab the Peninsula Highway killer before anyone else gets hurt?
D is for.....
Dead ........ Boys, Birds, Babies, Bodies, Calm, Folks, Gorgeous, Letters, Lions etc
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| Peter James - Dead Simple (2005) |
Dead Simple is the first in the Roy Grace series.....
It was meant to be a harmless stag night prank. A few hours later four of his best friends are dead, and Michael Harrison has disappeared. With only three days to the wedding, Detective Superintendent Grace - a man haunted by the shadow of his own missing wife - is contacted by Michael's beautiful, distraught fiancee, Ashley Harper. Grace discovers that the one man who ought to know Michael Harrison's whereabouts is saying nothing. But then he has a lot to gain - more than anyone realizes. For one man's disaster is another man's fortune ...
Earlier entries
CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - A IS FOR.... AX, ABBOTT, ABERDEEN
CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - B IS FOR ....... BOSTON, BIRD, BONES
CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - C IS FOR.........CAPE TOWN, CONFIDENCE MEN, CROSS
Ah, Garry Disher and Elmore Leonard...Now that's talent, Col. They've both done some great noir stories. And Peter James' Roy Grace series is good, too. I'll admit I've not caught up with it just lately, but it's good.
ReplyDeleteI like the Brighton setting for the Roy Grace books, Margot. I ought to get started on that series.
DeleteHm. I know the work of Leonard and James, but I should definitely try me some Disher.
ReplyDeleteI like his books, but need to read more from him myself.
DeleteGood luck
ReplyDeleteCan’t go wrong with old Elmore, Col. Recently, I’ve read some of his Westerns from the 1950s, which are quite different from his later crime novels. And, I have an Estleman on the TBR pile. Have not read any Morris, yet.
ReplyDeleteElgin, I've hear westerns described as crime fiction with hats, which isn't totally off the mark. I've enjoyed most of Elmore's westerns. The other two mentioned, I need to make time for.
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