It’s nice to see this member of the New York Chapter o fthe Mystery Writers of America graduate from short stories in ficiton magazines to a fully fledged novel with the self-published release A Fashion to Kill. Here we have an alpha hero in the form of a millionaire, who happens to also be a Medal of Honor winner. The niece he’s cared for as his own has been murdered by a serial killer. She lies at his feet, murdered just like the killer’s three previous victims who were all wannabe fashion models. “Look out, serial killer, because Jack Centaur is coming for you,” is what I say. Wyte likens his writing to Spillane and Child.
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Tania has gone missing. She witnessed a murder carried out by the Black Fist Triad and now she’s gone. With San Francisco as a backdrop, PI Ray Infantino must track her down. He doesn’t like the city though – too many bad memories. The biggest of which is the fact that his fiancee was murdered there years ago. Shaking down hookers and skin heads, and questioning cops, he becomes obsessed with not only finding Tania but also solving his lost lover’s murder. Infantino has appeared a few times in the past in short stories written by Nardizzi, who is a PI himself.
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This is music and online journalist Rick Koster’s second novel and it’s out as a Kensington ebook. Poppin’ a Cold one has been described as ‘hilariously obscene’ and not just because of its pulp-style cover. Here we have Finn Coffee of Treasure Cove, Mississippi. He’s a mortician who works alongside Brad Sheepcake. Mr Sheepcake has come up with an interesting sideline – filming necro-porn with the occupants of the mortuary as his stars. It’s proving successful, the mob have moved in to get a piece of that action, but the trouble is there aren’t enough attractive young dead people around. Pretty young Treasure Cove-ites start disappearing, and to shut Finn up the mob kidnap is girlfriend.
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Down in the Florida Everglades, rookie cop Karan Karew is an African American veteran, who fought in Iraq. She’s deputy sheriff down in Coral City but soon comes into conflict with racist deputy Freddie Gillespie and is suspended from the force. So she starts looking into Gillespie’s transgressions – such as blackmail and gun running – and when her maid’s son is kidnapped she also stumbles upon a murder squad operating in the normally serene city. The alligators are the least of her worries, but fortunately she has her attack Rottweiler Rufus on her side. If this one works out watch for Garlock’s second book Death in the Dry Tortugas.
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So we’ve had Mississippi, Florida and now the coast of California. That’s where Oxford-educated philanthropist Raja Williams works his beat. When the husband of a wealthy heiress is found dead in a yacht floating off shore, she asks for Williams’ help and he obliges. After all, she’s getting no results from the police. Soon it becomes clear that some kind of cover-up is going on and it might go all the way up to the governor. The book has been at the top of Amazon.com’s Mystery Series list, and readers have likened it to an episode of Kojak or Columbo.
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Bill Todd has created the character Danny Lancaster, an ex-paratrooper who was wounded in Afghanistan and decides to become a private investigator in Brighton. If you like Jack Reacher you might like Lancaster too. Here our hero is contracted to run surveillance on 70s rock icon Mickey ‘Tattoo’ Carpenter. This leads to grisly discoveries in a Cornish farmhouse and soon a young girl is found dead of an overdose and another is in a coma. Is someone out for revenge on the rock star and if so, what can Lancaster do about it? ‘Mud and fire’ are promised in the blurb. This is the second book in Todd’s self-published series, and he’s working on two more.
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Look down your nose at fan fiction at your peril – just look where things led after EL James started writing Twilight-based stories. Charlotte Smith is a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes and has written her own pastiche starring the great detective and Dr Watson. The book features three stories. Murder at Lodore Falls involves not just a killing but blackmail too, and an old adversary of Holmes and Watson resurfaces. The other two tales are Christmas stories, entitled The Adventure of the Wooden Boat and The Call of the Angels. ‘Tis the season.
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How about some retro Brit Grit from the East End? Bobby Taylor meets his maker on 5 November 1971 – it might just be because he’s a kingpin with an enemy or two. His son Mickey has to take over the firm, settle the old scores and find out what really happened to his father. With a nickname like ‘Dangerous’ you can tell Mickey grew up idolising his father but he won’t let sleeping dogs lie and like it or not a new order will have to be established in gangland. But is it other gangsters Mickey has to worry about? As he looks into it he discovers that his father Bobby was a tyrant who beat his mother, and his brothers and sisters have plenty of secrets they never dared tell.
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Self-publishing author Rod Lindsey has created Erza Hooten – aka Hoot – a US marshal working in the Pacific Northwest. When he’s tipped off that his childhood friend Norman Carpenter is in the area he takes more than an interest. The pair were blood brothers, connected by a shaman’s ritual, loved the same girl in highschool, and served in Vietnam together. They can sense each other. Trouble is, while Hoot won a Bronze Star for saving Norman’s life, today Norman is a scalp-collecting psychopath who has escaped from prison and is working as a contract killer. The author was influenced by the likes of Elmore Leonard and Stephen King.
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Arty Shaw is a genealogist, but he has to turn into a hardboiled private investigator after taking on the family tree of the beautiful actress Helen Valentine. She’s taking part in one of those TV family history shows and wants to know what happened to her ancestors. Turns out her grandmother Kay was half-Jewish and ran a resistance movement during WWII before being shipped to a concentration camp in 1942. The more Arty digs, the more danger he finds himself in as East European tough guys pop up to menace him while he tries to find out what happened to Kay. The unique thing here is that Arty Shaw is the first transsexual detective we’ve ever come across.
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