When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.

So goes what is sometimes called the greatest opening sentence in crime fiction, the beginning of James Crumley’s masterpiece The Last Good Kiss. The book is full of lines that…

I don’t like serial killer stories. Read them only if there is some other compelling reason to. (Like maybe because it was written by Declan Hughes.) Serial killer stories are the lazy writer’s way to build tension, creating a villain with the conscience of a shark and a psyche that is screwed up in some inexplicable manner no one would believe, but the author gets away with because the killers actions and motivations don’t have to make sense, he’s clearly completely nuts or he wouldn’t…

Computer problems have kept me from flogging Worst Enemies as relentlessly as I might have (you're welcome), but reviews are starting to come in just the same, and they are very heartening. Leighton Gage, author of the award-winning Chief Inspector Mario Silva series, has weighed in on Amazon thusly:



When you write crime novels, as I do, you tend to read them differently - and your experience often detracts from your…