I’ve written three trilogies so you’d think I would know how to do it by now. You’d be wrong. The first three-parter I wrote had a tortured journey to publication, with all three books in the series getting released by different publishers. That was the Lars & Shaine series, starting with The Devil Doesn’t Want…
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. Eric Beetner’s The Devil at Your Door is the third and presumably final entry in his Lars and Shaine series. It follows The Devil Doesn’t Want Me and When the Devil Comes to Call in chronicling the…
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…
Leadfoot by Eric Beetner is the 2nd fast and furious thriller featuring the McGraws—a family who will transport anything you require and won't ask any questions. The Dukes of Hazzard. “Thunder Road.” White Lightning. The moonshine-running driver hitting the backroads with suped-up Detroit iron and a trunkful of corn liquor, racing the revenuers, the sheriffs,…
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…
