Editing by Elizabeth

August 06, 2015

The Bitch by Les Edgerton

I was sailing right into the nasty part, and I had a feeling it was only going to get worse. — Jake Bishop

Jake Bishop is on the verge of achieving the American dream. He’s married, he and his wife have their first baby on the way, he has some college under his belt, and he’s a few short weeks from making the leap from working as a stylist in someone else’s salon to opening his own shop.

True, Bishop didn’t exactly take the most direct route to get there, and the trip wasn’t without some serious bumps in the road. For one thing, he’s a recovering alcoholic, though it’s been years since he’s touched the stuff. More serious, he’s an ex-con, having done two stints for burglary at Pendleton Reformatory, a maximum security prison in Indiana.

Still, the past is the past, and everything seems to be going fine. Until the call comes that alters Bishop’s life irrevocably.

Seems Bishop’s old cellmate from Pendleton, Walker “Spitball” Joy, has a job he’d like Bishop’s help with. The kind of job Bishop doesn’t do anymore. Problem is, Bishop kinda owes Spitball, who looked out for Bishop during his last stretch in the joint. Figuring he owes Spitball at least a sit-down, Bishop goes for the meet. There, he finds out the situation is much more dire than just a prison buddy trying to cash in a moral IOU. Seems Spitball’s in deep with the wrong person, someone he shared information about Bishop with. The kind of information that gives them leverage Bishop can’t easily say no to. →

August 03, 2015

Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich

“It was your grandfather let loose the demons on this mountain, and there ain’t no putting that genie back in the bottle.” — Val

Albert “Val” Valentine knows of what he speaks, as the fate of the Valentine family has been intertwined with that of the Burroughs clan since as far back as anyone can remember. And the more things change in the Burroughs fiefdom of Bull Mountain in North Georgia, the more they stay the same.

The Burroughs have been making their living off the mountain and the vices of men for generations, first by running moonshine, then branching out into marijuana, and most recently by moving meth. Throughout it all, the Burroughs and those who serve them have existed in their own world up on Bull Mountain, isolated and insulated from outsiders, including the law.

Sure, attempts were made over the years to bring whoever was in charge of the clan at the time down, but no one has ever been able to conquer the Burroughs, or Bull Mountain.

What outsiders have never been able to accomplish, however, may finally be on the verge of happening thanks to a Burroughs himself. Clayton Burroughs, tired of the family’s seemingly never-ending cycle of criminality, boldly chose to walk a different path—Sheriff. This choice understandably set him at odds with the family and its reigning patriarch, his brother, Halford. And while Clayton has made the conscious decision not to pro-actively get into Halford’s business—as long as it doesn’t spill down off the mountain into town—Clayton’s presented with a unique opportunity when Federal Agent Simon Holly shows up in his office. →

August 01, 2015

Unholy Bargain

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July 30, 2015

Lamentation by Joe Clifford

Someday, it would all change. Someday, I would make it right. Only someday never comes, does it? — Jay Porter

It’s hard for someday to come when you live life spinning your wheels stuck somewhere between the past and the present. Such is the state Jay Porter finds himself in.

Ever since his parents were killed in a car accident one winter twenty years ago when their car’s brakes failed, sending them off a bridge into an icy lake, Jay has been stuck in a holding pattern, his life failing to flourish.

A large reason Jay’s stuck in neutral is because of his brother, Chris. A decade older, Chris became Jay’s guardian after their parents were killed. Unfortunately, Chris also became a junkie, a thief and a liar. Now, Jay spends his days working dead-end, manual labor jobs just trying to keep his head above water, all while chasing and cleaning up after Chris.

Jay knows his brother is an anchor on his life—his loyalty to Chris even cost Jay his relationship with his girlfriend and two-year-old son—but blood ties run deep and Jay can’t find it in his heart to cut Chris completely loose no matter how bad he screws up.

Things take an ominous turn, however, when Chris disappears shortly after Jay bails him out of jail, yet again. Right before he went missing Chris was going on about having come across some very sensitive information, information that people are apparently willing to do anything, even commit murder, to keep from seeing the light of day. Now, Jay has to try and find his brother before the wrong people do, while also trying to keep himself from ending up in the crosshairs in the process. →

July 28, 2015

The Fury of Blacky Jaguar by Angel Luis Colón

“Fuck discreet. The boy needs a proper beating—no other way to handle it.” — Blacky Jaguar

Subtle is not a word Blacky Jaguar is familiar with. The ex-IRA enforcer, formerly known as Danny Clarke, lives his life at two speeds: idling or pushing the redline—there is no in-between.

So when his beloved 1959 Plymouth Fury goes missing, Blacky launches his own personal crusade to get the car back, and woe be it to whoever took his beloved “Polly,” or anyone standing between him and the goal of retrieving his ride.

Unfortunately for Blacky, once he starts down the warpath his familiar brand of over-the-top mayhem puts him on the radar of FBI Agent Linda Chen, a woman as dedicated to achieving her goal—busting Blacky—as he is to rescuing Polly. Chen also happens to be Blacky’s ex, so she’s double-barrel loaded for Blacky’s backside.

When their paths finally cross at a house in the Bronx owned by a gangster known as Osito, the Little Bear, the runaway train that is the fury of Blacky Jaguar finally runs completely off the rails in a blaze of retribution, righteous indignation, and glorious mayhem.

Though it weighs in at a trim 128 pages, Angel Luis Colón’s The Fury of Blacky Jaguar hits as hard as its Irish antihero Blacky does, mugging the reader and dragging him along for the ride, like it or not. But like it you will if you’re a fan of flying fists and good old fashioned pulp, as Colón has created in Blacky a character who deftly walks the line between cartoonish and compelling. →

July 17, 2015

Killing Secrets by Dianne Emley

“You’re going to be flying solo. You okay with that?” — Sergeant Early

Detective Nan Vining is used to being in situations where she has to fly solo. Both professionally as an investigator with the Pasadena Police Department and as a single mother raising a teenage daughter, Vining has reached a point where she’s learned to trust her instincts and go where they take her.

In Killing Secrets, however, the first entry in the Nan Vining series in five years (Read more from author Dianne Emley about revisiting Vining after such a layoff.), Vining finds herself farther out on a solo ledge than ever before.

The book opens with Vining’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Emily, and her boyfriend stumbling across a gruesome crime scene while out in a city park at dusk. Two people, one of their classmates and a popular teacher from their school, have been killed. As the investigator with the most seniority and experience, Vining naturally expects to be assigned the case. Upon arriving at the scene, however, she’s surprised to learn that two other investigators, one of them extremely inexperienced, have been given the assignment instead.

Her surprise turns to confusion, and then frustration, as the case is handled both in an unorthodox manner and with lightning speed. Someone high up in the PD is apparently in a hurry to chalk things up as a murder-suicide and be done with it. Vining isn’t convinced, and decides to dig deeper. →

July 15, 2015

The Comeback Character by Dianne Emley

It’s a pleasure to welcome LA Times bestselling author Dianne Emley back to the blog. Well-known for her Detective Nan Vining thrillers (The First Cut, Cut to the Quick, The Deepest Cut, and Love Kills) and Iris Thorne mysteries (Cold Call, Slow Squeeze, Fast Friends, Foolproof, and Pushover), Dianne’s newest entry in the Nan Vining series, Killing Secrets, is forthcoming from Random House on July 21st. →

July 09, 2015

New Yorked by Rob Hart

“New York is not a city. It is an idea.” — Ginny

Ashley (Ash) McKenna is a man molded and driven by ideas. As a boy growing up on Staten Island, Ash would sit with his firefighter father in the wee hours of the night listening to the emergency scanner, his dad patiently explaining to him what all the mysterious calls and codes meant.

Watching his father go to work, both as scheduled and spontaneously in response to some of those emergency calls, Ash formed strong ideas of duty, honor, and responsibility. And when his father was killed on 9/11 while attempting to evacuate people on the upper floors of the World Trade Center, Ash was branded with the idea of sacrifice. And loss.

So when Ash pulls himself up out of the depths of a blackout drunk one afternoon only to learn that his longtime friend and unrequited love, Chell, has been murdered, his whole world comes crashing down around him.

The loss he feels is complicated and compounded by the message he finds from Chell on his cell phone, apparently left only minutes before her death. She’d reached out to Ash for help, begged him to come meet her because she was only streets away from his apartment and feared she was being followed, and Ash failed—failed to meet his self-appointed responsibility to protect her.

Ash can’t live with that. And he won’t let whoever murdered Chell live with it, either. →

July 03, 2015

Gun Needle Spoon by Patrick O’Neil

I shot dope, sold drugs, did crimes, went to jail. It doesn’t mean I have to continue living like that. — Patrick O’Neil

Patrick O’Neil shouldn’t be alive. Statistically, at least, he should be either dead or locked up for the rest of his life. That he is neither dead nor in jail given the life he’s lead is a testament to the power of the human spirit.

That, and a good lawyer.

I first “met” Patrick in that causal online way you do these days, following him on

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