A while back, The Overlook Press began making the backlist of thriller author R.J. Ellory available to U.S. readers for the first time. The latest offering is A QUIET VENDETTA, originally published in Great Britain in 2005. Fortunately, the passing years have not diminished its impact in the least.
On a hot August night in New Orleans, an abandoned car is found with the body of a dead man in the trunk. Police learn that the man, whose death was both brutal and probably ritualistic, was the bodyguard assigned to Catherine Ducane, daughter of the governor of Louisiana. Investigators conclude she has been kidnapped, and await word from the perpetrator to learn his demands for her release.
[click to continue…]
Pop-music critic and novelist Jim Fusilli first featured the fictional city of Narrows Gate in short stories published over the last several years. Now it is at the heart of the full-length NARROWS GATE, a sprawling, fictional retelling of the formative days of the Italian-based organized crime scene on the East Coast in the years surrounding World War II.
As the waterfront town just outside of New York City, the titular site plays home to three protagonists. William “Bebe” Rosiglino is a skinny, awkward young man who doesn’t show much promise of anything, until the day he discovers his singing voice. From that moment on, music becomes his passion and his sole motivation.
[click to continue…]
The world of rap and hip-hop music is full of executives and performers with criminal ties, taunts and threats of violence in lyrics and press interviews, and cross-country rivalries that have sometimes escalated into murder. Anyone following the music’s evolution might wonder why someone hasn’t written a crime novel about this often tense scene.
Now someone has. Nelson George, a noted and respected chronicler of hip-hop since its earliest days (HIP HOP AMERICA and others), has brought his observations and insight to THE PLOT AGAINST HIP HOP, his first novel. And other than some minor deficiencies, it is a heartfelt and compelling work.
[click to continue…]
Avid readers and book collectors have a list of books they’d love to pick up, but go for outrageous prices. I’m talking about those tomes with lurid titles and covers that promise some true thrills. Leave it to Stark House Press to come to the rescue by putting out this collection, THE CHEATERS / DIAL “M” FOR MAN, which it’s even branded under the label of “Stark House Sleaze Classics.”
The two novels in question are both from the overworked typewriter of Orrie Hitt. We’re introduced to him by a touching, sweet foreword by three of his daughters, who tell of a man who was always brimming with ideas. It’s followed by an introduction by Brian Ritt which gets to the heart of the matter: Hitt’s career was in a genre not looked upon as great literature.
[click to continue…]
When thinking about the location of this latest collection of original stories in Akashic’s country and world tour of noir, the question isn’t “Why New Jersey?,” but rather, “What took them so long?”
New Jersey, both because of its geographic location between New York City and Philadelphia, and its own history of crime and political corruption, make it an ideal setting of noir fiction — as much if not more so than New York, Brooklyn, Chicago or any of the other cities that preceded it. The good news is that NEW JERSEY NOIR is certainly worth the wait, thanks in no small part to the knowledge and vision of editor/contributor Joyce Carol Oates.
[click to continue…]
