Imagine this: you kidnap a rich guy’s wife, figuring he’ll be smart enough to pay the
ransom without calling the cops, and you’ll
be able to spend the rest of your life spending. What could possibly go wrong?
How about this? That rich guy doesn’t want his wife anymore. He
couldn’t care less what you do with
her. And you’ve got no Plan B. Wow! You know this is going to be a great story.
The characters led by Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara are
some of Elmore Leonard’s finest. They
depend on each other but realize that there is no honor among thieves, so they
can’t trust each other.
Once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down. The Switch is the first in a two-book set, which includes
Rum Punch, the book that inspired one of my favorite movies, Jackie Brown.
“My favorite Leonard book….He writes the way Hammett and Chandler might write today, if they sharpened their senses of ironic humor and grew better ears for dialogue.” —Dallas Morning News
“The best writer of crime fiction alive.” —Newsweek
Dangerously eccentric characters, razor-sharp black humor, brilliant dialog, and suspense all rolled into one tight package—that’s The Switch, Elmore Leonard’s classic tale of a kidnapping gone wrong…or terribly right, depending on how you look at it. The Grand Master whom the New York Times Book Review calls, “the greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever,” has written a wry and twisting…
Holy
crap, I thought when I finished this incredible, gripping, award-winning book
of dystopian fiction — this could really happen!
It isn't the easiest book to read if only because McCarthy disliked the
punctuation readers have come to expect. Why bother with apostrophes or
quotation marks anyway?
But
this story! A father and son, at least you think that is their relationship,
are trying to survive after something -- we don't know what -- wiped out most
of the world's population. They can trust no one but each other and find out quickly
that nice guys finish dead.
It's one of the best
books I read in the past year, and it is one of the few I will read again and
again.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive, this "tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful" (San Francisco Chronicle).
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if…
It's 1932. For the best history thriller I have ever read, Max Allan Collins spins
together characters like Al Capone, Frank Nitti, George Raft, and even Ronald "Dutch"
Reagan.
True Detective is the story of a young cop, Nathan
Heller, who vows never to be corrupted, even though he's already done something and
will do more on the wrong side of the law. Maybe.
While it's a fantastic story, and the characters and dialogue are unbeatable, the best
part for me is that while this didn't happen precisely as Collins wrote it, the story was pretty damn close to
reality.
In the mob-choked Chicago of 1932, private detective Nathan Heller may be willing to risk his life to earn a Depression dollar, but he never sacrifices his sardonic wit. Now, author Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition) reissues the contemporary classic that introduces the wise-cracking Nathan Heller in all his guts and glory.
When Mayor Cermak's "Hoodlum Squad" brings Heller along on a raid with no instructions but to keep his mouth shut and his gun handy, he becomes an unwitting, unwilling part of a hit on Al Capone's successor, Frank Nitti. As a result, Heller quits the force to…
She hated needles but
trusted him enough to roll up her sleeve and allow him to give her an
injection. She didn’t know he wanted her to have the kind of deep sleep from
which she’d never awaken.
When the young woman
is found dead in Grand Rapids, Michigan, police officers don’t see any
injuries. No one forced their way into her home. The medical examiner finds
nothing that could have killed this woman. But then the Me found
a tiny puncture wound smaller than a freckle on the woman’s arm, and
the investigation was on.
The Murder
of Bella Black is a heartbreaking and tragic tale of a young
woman’s murder and one police detective’s refusal
to allow her killer to escape justice.
