Saying goodbye can really suck. Way back in ye olden days of 2017, I wrote a noir novella titled A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps. It featured three central characters: Bill, a sarcastic and luxury-loving conman who wasn’t nearly as smart as he thought he was; Fiona, a hard-driving mob assassin (and Bill’s on-again, off-again…
It’s easy to panic when you realize that a five-foot rattlesnake is swimming a few feet away from you. My wife and I had agreed to let a good friend of ours take us on a hike through the wilds of eastern Oregon. The hike itself, we’d been assured as we loaded up the SUV…
Excerpt On the three-hour drive to Boise, we said little, our attention locked on the radio crackling news reports every twenty minutes. No word of famous people disappearing, or shootouts in the woods. During the hunt, we had set part of an abandoned town on fire, and I supposed that smoke from the inferno would…
From a writer’s perspective, the mystery genre is often a rigid one—someone committed a crime that needs solving, and the protagonist will methodically work through the clues to do so. And while that rigidity might seem downright restrictive, it’s also played into the hands of authors who want to introduce outlandish concepts and worlds: the…
In order to transport goods between heavily fortified cities, companies hire convoy escorts. Maxine is the best of these new road warriors: tough, smart, and unbelievably fast. But she also has a secret: She’s the niece of New York’s most notorious outlaw, a man hunted by what’s left of the nation’s law enforcement.
Lawrence Block published A Dance at the Slaughterhouse, the ninth book featuring his iconic detective Matthew Scudder, in 1991 (it won the Edgar in 1992). It takes place in an increasingly unfamiliar world to modern readers. Scudder, a recovering alcoholic and former cop, regularly stalks the “Duce,” as they used to call the pre-gentrified stretch…
Seven a.m. in early December is the best time to visit Times Square. The hordes of holiday tourists have yet to descend; the stores and theaters are closed; the costumed “performers” won’t show up to hustle the passersby for another few hours. Sure, you have to deal with the visual offense of building-sized screens flashing…
Like most people, I first read Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” in a high school English class. Its plot is straightforward: a big-game hunter, Rainsford, is marooned on a jungle island where he meets a mysterious man named General Zaroff. The General proposes a peculiar diversion: he’ll hunt Rainsford for three days; if Rainsford…
Boise Longpig Hunting Club by Nick Kolakowski is a wild ride into the dark heart of the American dream, where even the most brutal desires can be fulfilled for a price, and nobody is safe from the rich and powerful. When you want someone found, you call bounty hunter Jake Halligan. He’s smart, tough, and best…
Slaughterhouse Blues by Nick Kolakowski catches up with Bill and Fiona—the chattery and gun-happy antiheroes of A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps—soon after they’ve escaped the Rockaway Mob, the criminal enterprise from which Bill “borrowed” several million dollars (available February 9, 2018). Read an exclusive excerpt from Slaughterhouse Blues by Nick Kolakowski, then make sure…
