“I’ve never been smart enough to know when to quit.” – Terry Quinn
For former boxer turned mob enforcer Terry Quinn, not being smart enough to know when to quit has been both his lifelong blessing and curse. Once on track to fight for the heavyweight title, his refusal to take a dive in a fixed fight – opting to kill his opponent in the ring instead – lead to his license being revoked and his career derailed.
As one door closed another opened, however, and through it walked crime boss Archie Doyle. A man with tremendous ambition, Doyle knew he’d need a dependable crew around him to reach his goals, and he wanted Quinn to be his right-hand man. His prospects severely limited, Quinn accepted, and the two never looked back.
A decade later, Doyle’s 1930s New York City empire–illicit gambling clubs, bootlegging and speakeasies–is still managing to do well at the outset of the Great Depression, but he’s smart enough to understand the gravy train won’t last forever and hatches a plan to set himself up for life beyond Prohibition.
When one of his key lieutenants is the target of an assassination attempt, Doyle sends Quinn to question the right-hand man of his rival. Things go incredibly sideways, and before he knows it Quinn is at the center of an all-out gang war. With Doyle’s competition swearing he had no involvement in the hit, and the once complacent–and on the payroll–cops and politicians getting antsy, Quinn must figure out who’s really behind the escalating violence if there’s any hope of salvaging Doyle’s big plan…and for them all to stay alive.
In my opinion, there’s only one thing more important to an artist than following your dream: the manner in which you go about it.
I may write books of no redeeming social value like my latest release, Bombshell. But I think crime fiction, even written with a sense of humor and some romance, should still be accurate. I’m always ‘investigating,’ attempting to learn something, anything, that will make my books a little more realistic. My books are all set in Minnesota, usually in my hometown of St. Paul. 
The past twelve months were a very busy reading and reviewing year for me. Though I’m sure a few slipped through the cracks and didn’t get counted, in looking back at my records it appears I read 192 books (novels, novellas, and collections) this year, and reviewed 116 of those.
During my early teens, I subsisted on a steady diet of noir. Apparently that’s what happens when you never get into video games. I knew where it came from and, more importantly, thought I knew what it was all about: gritty settings, hard stories, down-and-out characters, witty dialogue, cool guys in fedoras, and a dash of violence. Tough, hard-drinking men who punched hard, didn’t take lip from anyone, and weren’t afraid to pull their gun out were a sine qua non element of the books I devoured. A few years later, I didn’t know what noir was anymore. That’s when things got interesting. 
“Until the blood starts to flow, it’s always a people situation.” – Everett
“Have you ever wanted to burn down your own home?”
The work of Joe Clifford shouldn’t be new to anyone who does much poking around in the online crime fiction community. In addition to his short stories routinely showing up places like Shotgun Honey, Thuglit, and A Twist of Noir, Joe is also the editor of the 
