Bart Paul’s See That My Grave Is Kept Clean is a mix-up of Western and mystery with a taciturn hero and a twisting plot, wrapped in lived-in details. Fans of James Lee Burke and Craig Johnson should take note of this third installment of the Tommy Smith High Country Noir series. The latest by Bart…
Poughkeepsie Shuffle by Dietrich Kalteis is a violent crime caper about an ex-con who gets in over his head helping run a scam pushing guns from the U.S. over the Candian border. For several years now, Dietrich Kalteis has been churning out top-notch crime novels from north of the border. There are inevitable comparisons to…
Bluff by Michael Kardos is a twisty and masterfully plotted tale about the lure of the con and one woman’s fight to keep herself clean and stick to her magician’s code. It started with the most basic of requests: Pick a card. Don’t we all love a con artist? There’s something so satisfying about putting…
People love a vintage car. A classic Mustang, a cherry Corvette. So why don’t they just keep the same body style and make them year after year? Because the only thing people like more than a classic is something brand new. Same goes for books. If a book is lucky enough to be reprinted—either in…
The Devil at Your Door by Eric Beetner is the third volume in the Lars and Shaine series (available February 12, 2018). Lars and Shaine have returned to a quiet life on the islands, but for Lars there is unfinished business. When he gets information that will lead him to exact revenge on behalf of…
I picked up a strange book called The Dog Fighter without any prior knowledge of the author. This was in 2004, and the high praise this debut novel was getting intrigued me enough to give it a shot. One of the hooks was that the writer used no punctuation beyond periods and question marks. No…
The Jones Men was a thrilling novel to discover. A lost “cult” novel from the 1970s, written by veteran journalist Vern E. Smith, it is a story of the drug trade on the streets of Detroit, and it absolutely blew me away when I read it forty years after its initial publication. The novel crackles…
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley is the 1st book in the famed Easy Rawlins series. Since his introduction in 1990, Easy Rawlins has been the star of more than a dozen novels by MWA grandmaster Walter Mosley. In his debut outing, Devil In A Blue Dress, Rawlins arrives fully formed. At its…
Parker has become one of the most celebrated characters in crime fiction. Over the course of 24 novels spanning four decades, this tough-talking, tougher-acting thief bulldozed his way through the years, never losing sight of his unique code of conduct. In the debut Parker novel, The Hunter from 1962, we meet a man who virtually…
RECENTLY FINISHED: Once Were Cops by Ken Bruen. I've been on a bit of a tear with Ken Bruen lately. This was the ninth Bruen novel I've read this year. Granted, Bruen tends to write short novels so it's really only like three “regular” novels, but I love Bruen's stripped-down style so much I feel like…
