Another dirty dozen.........
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| £1 Amazon bargain and I have enjoyed this author previously! |
Fergus Fletcher is a hit man. For five thousand pounds, he’ll kill anyone you want. For seven, he’ll frame someone else. Pretending to kill someone is a first, but Alex Pennan has stolen from the mob and needs to fake his own death.
Fergus is looking for love. So is Sam Ireland, a private investigator and part-time bike messenger. But she’s got her hands on a very important package and is in a world of trouble with the mob. Joe Pepper, pillar of society and corrupt gangland fixer, will stop at nothing—nothing at all—to intercept the package and protect his reputation.
Can Alex stay dead while his widow dances on his grave? Can Joe save himself before his stomach ulcer explodes? Can Fergus and Sam make it to a second date before Joe hires him to kill her?
Welcome to Glasgow. It’s a love story.
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| Amazon FREEBIE - I liked Gisby's Burrymen book recently. |
“This book is quite remarkable. It does not just defy genre, it almost defies definition... It goes way beyond being a novel and enters the realms of asking what a novel is. What fiction is. What creativity is. It is deep and it requires a lot from a reader. But then it required a lot from the author.”
His novel was called “The Olive Branch”. It was a sort of futuristic Cold War thriller. He had written it more than three decades ago when he was a young Turk, full of ambitions and principles and politics. But, like many a first novel, the manuscript had been abandoned, left to gather dust. Until now.
Now he has time on his hands. He’ll tidy up the manuscript and save it on his computer. He’ll preserve it. But only for the sake of posterity, he argues. Not because it’s any good. Or so he thinks.
When he begins the process of preserving “The Olive Branch”, he embarks on a journey of self-discovery, a journey of revelations. Revelations about the young idealist he once was. Revelations about the man he had turned into; his failings, his prejudices, his demons. But, crucially, revelations about what might have been.
“The honesty and humility with which Gisby writes is quite unique and deeply moving.”
“The novel reminded me of the movie, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which screenwriter Charlie Kaufman used non-linear narration to look at the nature of memory. Gisby does something similar here. He gives us magic spectacles with which to view the unfolding of a life; a 3D image, if you will.”
“You could consider this book quixotic, given its two entirely different levels of storyline, but I actually found it extremely seductive.”
“What makes this book so fascinating and so important is that this is the way we experience life: the warp of life and the woof of memory, interwoven into our daily lives.”
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| Not as if I don't have enough from Mosley in the tubs - charity shop bargain - £1.99 |
IS EASY RAWLINS A MATCH FOR CHARCOAL JOE?
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Life for Easy Rawlins is surprisingly... easy. He's living off the proceeds of his last case, trying to keep out of trouble. Of course it's not going to last.
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Because Easy's old friend Mouse knocks on his door. Mouse is one of the deadliest men in America. And Mouse wants a small favour. He wants Easy to help a man he says is wrongly imprisoned, a friend of Charcoal Joe.
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Charcoal Joe is a mythical figure in the LA underworld - he pulls all the strings but keeps out of sight. Reluctantly, Easy agrees - he owes Mouse his life. But this is no small favour. It's going to be Easy's deadliest investigation yet. It's going to take him from the beaches of Malibu to the shadiest stretches of Sunset in a frenetic adventure through a wild and unrepentant city.
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| 4th in the Max Bruen-Starr collaboration series - a library book! |
DEALING... PRODUCING...ALL IN A DAY'S WORK FOR A DRUGLORD. OR IN HOLLYWOOD. Ruined and on the lam, former drug kingpin Max Fisher stumbles upon the biggest discovery of his crooked life: a designer drug called PIMP that could put him back on top. Meanwhile, a certain femme fatale from his past is pursuing a comeback dream of her own, setting herself up in Hollywood as producer of a series based on her and Max's life story. But even in La-La Land, happy endings are hard to come by, especially with both the cops and your enemies in the drug trade coming after you...
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| Copy from publisher |
A mother and daughter are snatched on their drive home from a cinema. The crime has a number of chilling similarities to a cold case Professor Nick Fennimore had been lecturing on. Then Fennimore begins receiving taunting messages - is he being targeted by the kidnapper?
Meanwhile, a photograph emailed from Paris could bring Fennimore closer to discovering the fate of Suzie, his own daughter, now missing for six years. He seeks help from his old friend, DCI Kate Simms, recently returned from the US. But Kate is soon blocked from the investigation... A mother and child's lives hang in the balance as Fennimore and Simms try to break through police bureaucracy to identify their abductor.
Atmospheric, chilling, and full of suspense, the dynamic pairing of AD Garrett's acclaimed duo, Fennimore and Simms, delivers a pulse-pounding plot that will keep you guessing until the very end.
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| Copy from publisher |
When the Jarrett Creek Fire Department is called to douse a blaze on the outskirts of town, they discover a grisly scene: five black young people have been murdered. Newly elected Chief of Police Samuel Craddock, just back from a stint in the Air Force, finds himself an outsider in the investigation headed by the Texas Highway Patrol. He takes an immediate dislike to John Sutherland, a racist trooper
Craddock’s fears are realized when Sutherland arrests Truly Bennett, a young black man whom Craddock knows and respects. Sutherland cites dubious evidence that points to Bennett, and Craddock uncovers facts leading in another direction. When Sutherland refuses to relent, Craddock is faced with a choice that will define him as a lawman—either let the highway patrol have its way, or take on a separate investigation himself.
Although his choice to investigate puts both Craddock and his family in danger, he perseveres. In the process, he learns something about himself and the limits of law enforcement in Jarrett Creek.
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| Amazon voucher purchase |
When the Stanton brothers decide to rob Teesside construction magnate, drug dealer, and all-round scumbag, Terry Albright, they think it’s going to be easy. Get in, get out, break a few bones, and make a tidy profit.
But when the money isn’t where it’s supposed to be, they find themselves holed-up in a high-rise flat, trying to break into the bedroom of a fat Eminem wannabe. And when Albright raises the stakes by bringing in a family of psychotic bone breakers to deal with the mess, the brothers find out that this job isn’t going to be easy at all.
The Stantons come to realise that if they want to get out of the flat alive they will need to play dirty – very dirty. And the only way to do that is by getting bloody – very bloody.
Bone Breakers is a crime thriller with the emphasis on thrills. It screams along at a furious pace, mixing fast action, ultra-violence, black comedy, and the Stanton brothers at their bickering, foul-mouthed best.
WARNING: CONTAINS VERY STRONG LANGUAGE AND VIOLENCE THROUGHOUT. NOT FOR THE EASILY OFFENDED OR THOSE OF A SENSITIVE DISPOSITION.
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| Ditto above |
Mike Hollister is in trouble. Deep trouble. Having been sucked into a trap by a stunner with emerald eyes, he's now being taken for a ride by some very smart blackmailers. He's fresh out of luck and almost out of time. So he does the one thing he can in that situation. He brings in the Stanton brothers to help him. All he wants is the blackmailers off his back, but the brothers have other ideas. They intend to play these scumbags at their own game and make a lot of money into the bargain. They're going to make them really pay.
This 9,000 word prequel to Bone Breakers has the foul-mouthed bickering brothers coming up against some of their smartest and most venal opponents. It's as sharp and cutting as a blade.
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| Amazon voucher purchase |
On his last day in power, with a blizzard threatening 18 inches of snow, Sheriff Bittersmith’s is called to the scene of a crime. A farmer has been stabbed clean through the neck with a pitchfork. Two sets of tracks lead from the barn, and the dead man’s frantic wife exclaims her daughter is missing. Convinced it was Gale G’Wain, the orphan who worked at the farm, Bittersmith follows the vanishing footprints into the storm.
Three miles away, Gale G’Wain is alone and close to dead. He’s holed up in an empty farmhouse, half-dressed and nearly dead after falling through lake ice. Innocent, but unlikely to ever stand trial in a town as corrupt as Bittersmith, he loads his gun and prepares to defend himself against the dead man’s bloodthirsty sons and the Sheriff’s Department.
Set in small town Wyoming in the 70s and unfolding in a single day, Clayton Lindemuth's debut novel, Cold Quiet Country, explores small-town corruption and the lengths some people will go to exact revenge.
“Lindemuth’s impressive debut…is a go-for-the-jugular country noir….Lindemuth carefully weaves characters’ backstories into this thrilling narrative, and his visceral prose and unsparing tone are wonderfully reminiscent of such modern rural noir masters as Tom Franklin and Donald Ray Pollock.”
Publishers Weekly Starred Review
Clayton Lindemuth was born in Royal Oak, MI, but grew up in rural western Pennsylvania. After serving in the U.S. Army he began a career in financial services, finished his BA at Arizona State University, and is now a sales manager at a prestigious firm. His interest include economics, woodworking, and running marathons. Cold Quiet Country is his first published work. Cold Quiet Country is Clayton Lindemuth's first novel.
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| 2016 Ned Kelly Winner - Amazon purchase. |
Detective Inspector Daniel Clement is back in Broome, the tropical town where he grew up, licking his wounds from a busted marriage and struggling to be impressed by his new team of small-town, inexperienced cops. But stagnation and lethargy soon give way to a case with urgent purpose. On the edge of the desert, a man is found dead in a crocodile-infested watering hole. And he is only the first. The connection between the victims is elusive, but Clement must pursue it as a decades-old mystery begins to unravel and a monster cyclone brews on the horizon.
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| Amazon FREEBIE - I have a stack of stuff from Eric Beetner on the kindle. |
Seething hatred spurs The Lawyer forward, with a burning vengeance for his family slaughtered by seven hardened gunslingers. He’s tracking them down, one by one, until every killer is in the ground. His next target, Big Jim Kimbrough, left tracks to the small town of Sundown, Arkansas, where The Lawyer learns his prey has already moved on.
But he can’t leave after he witnesses a black man named Josiah being dragged behind a horse, the man’s only crime is allegedly taking food from a white man’s table, and is about to be lynched. The Lawyer takes up arms to save Josiah, realizing Kimbrough is slipping from his grasp with every minute he spends in Sundown. None of that will matter, though, if The Lawyer doesn’t survive the next twelve hours in the wake of a racially charged mob, fueled by the town’s tyrant and cheap liquor.
Eric Beetner (The Year I Died Seven Times) is no stranger to writing terse, action-packed storylines. He shifts his gifted prose from modern crime tales to the gritty world of the Old West without missing a beat. SIX GUNS AT SUNDOWN is a riveting Western that continually tightens its grip to the last provocative page.
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| Copy received from author |
It is a sweltering summer morning in New Jersey and an appalling sight awaits Ben O’Shaughnessy…
When he arrives in ‘The Embroidery Capital of the World’ to drop the roughs off for some new products, he soon finds the body of a young sketcher, her slender form tilted sideways, her hands balled up into fists.
And that’s not all - her mouth is crudely stitched shut with red embroidery thread.
Ben, who also writes a gossip column as ‘Mr Knowbody’ for the Jersey Journal, is shocked and pained.
But nobody appears to want to find out who murdered Nikki and why – no one except him that is.
Though the embroidery business paid the rent, Ben’s secret life as Mr Knowbody kept him sane.
Could Mr Knowbody unknot the thread?
He certainly has more than a passing acquaintance with the seedy underbelly of glamour capitals like New York and his is a world where everyone is fighting to keep their head above water.
It is a world of ultimate human exploitation, where the trappings of civilised life – local politicians, businessmen, law enforcement, the Church – are exposed as merely skin deep when Mr Knowbody starts poking his unwanted nose in.
And when Nikki’s mother Hazel doesn’t seem to react when she learns of her daughter’s death, Mr Knowbody can’t help wondering…what secret could she be hiding?
Red Thread is a riveting read, peppered with the humour and satisfyingly taut structure of Ernest Hemingway.
Hopefully - less in November. The shutters are coming down on the library!
Andrew Nette author of Gunshine State and Ghost Money was kind enough to answer a few questions on his reading and writing habits.
Oh
hell yes, definitely. I have already plotted out a sequel.
