Fast Shuffle by David Black is a hard-boiled noir about a used-car salesman who believes he's a private detective straight from the pages of Raymond Chandler (available July 7, 2015). Fast Shuffle is the story of private detective Harry Dickinson, a hard-boiled, tough-as-nails detective with a love of old jazz standards and finding the solutions…
An exclusive excerpt from Critical Damage by Robert K. Lewis, the second dark crime novel featuring former San Francisco cop and recovering junkie, P.I. Mark Mallen (available April 8, 2014). When ex-cop and recovering junkie Mark Mallen is asked to track down two very different girls who have gone missing, he doesn’t think twice about…
There are some shows that change your life when you’re a kid. For some of you out there it might’ve been The Outer Limits. Or maybe it was Night Gallery. Perhaps even The A-Team. For me? S.W.A.T. was one of those shows. In some other posts I’ve done here, I talked previously about a couple…
Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux is a literary thriller featuring a psychiatric hospital, forgery, and an international conspiracy (available February 4, 2014). I had to sit here a long while after finishing Marcel Theroux’s Strange Bodies. Why? Because I was literally stunned by the novel I’d just finished. To use a very trite phrase, I…
Oh man, O Man. I need to come clean on something before I get going. And that is that I was only nine or so when this very incredible, very thoughtful TV show first came on the scene. I was too young to stay up that late. I only vaguely remember the second half of…
An excerpt of Untold Damage, the first novel in the series featuring former San Francisco undercover police officer Mark Mallen (available April 8, 2013). Estranged from his wife and daughter, former undercover cop Mark Mallen has spent the last four years in a haze of heroin. When his best friend from the academy, Eric…
The first ever blockbuster. Began Steven Spielberg’s career. That legendary musical score. Had Robert Shaw in it. Yes… I’m talkin’ Jaws. Where to start, right? This was the movie that gave us the “summer blockbuster.” It also began the long series of “nature gone angry” genre films such as, The Swarm, Day of the Animals,…
The Devil Doesn’t Want Me is a humorous noir novella by Eric Beetner, recent recipient of the Stalker Award for Most Criminally Underrated Author (available October 23, 2012). I’ve never done one of these Fresh Meat things before, and was a bit nervous about it. I mean, giving my opinion when it’s asked for is…
There was I was, sitting in my latest favorite bar in the city, Held Up in Traffic, when the door opened and in walked a Russian secret agent, an old mobster, and a Nazi zombie. Yeah, I know. Sounds like the beginning to a bad joke. Work with me here, yeah? I looked at them,…
So there I sat, at the stick in my latest hangout, The End of Times, having another Scotch on the rocks. The guy on the stool next to mine reminded me of Orson Wells during his “We will sell no wine before its time” Paul Masson phase. For some reason, this guy kept looking over…
