I just wrapped up a chat with one of my writer friends, Rebecca Forster, author of a great number of books including Silent Witness, which is one of the... best... legal thrillers... EVER... written. I swear I could not put that book down. Anyway, she's hit a set-back of sorts in her career and, for a lark, decided to put some of her back list on Kindle and she's actually doing very well. As experiments go, it hasn't been a disappointment. She suggested that I do the same with a novel I… Continue

We are excited to note that 2010 will be a big one for fans of Max Allan Collins. While looking at the Hard Case Crime website tonight, I spotted the cover shot of yet another new Quarry novel, this one entitled Quarry's Ex. This is terrific news and the only bad thing is that we must wait until October before the book drops. What the heck are we going to read until then? Oh, right, Collins has the new Mike Hammer book coming out, among other things. We should be okay.



But we must… Continue

You don’t get very far as a reader of hard-boiled literature without hearing how “great” Chandler’s “Red Wind” is. The first paragraph gets all the attention and is, I think, the highlight of the story. It reads:



There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the… Continue