QUARRY’S VOTE Max Allan Collins Hard Case Crime 237 pages This is one series we came in late on, not having been aware of Max Collins’ hitman Quarry until Hard Case Crime convinced him to bring the character out of mothballs for one more tale; “The Last Quarry” in 2015.
THE DEVIL DOGS OF BELLEAU WOODS By Terrence McCauley Down & Out Books 130 pages “The Devil Dogs of Belleau Woods,” is a gripping war adventure set during one of the most brutal battles of World War One. Corporal Charlie Doherty is a New York City cop who thought he
3 The Hard Way By Gary Phillips Down & Out Books 295 pages First before digging into this book’s trio of excellent pulp yarns, we want to tip our fedora to Down & Out Books. A fairly new publishing house, the quality of their recent titles has been excellent and
CAPE HELL By Loren D. Estleman Forge Books 224 pgs Available May 2016 Now we’ve only read a few books by Loren D. Estleman but those were enough to convince us of his immeasurable storytelling talents. It is also clear he possesses a genuine fondness for westerns as this latest
A HANDFUL OF HELL Classic War & Adventure Stories By Robert F. Dorr New Texture Books 323 pages At the height of the classic pulp era of the 1930s and 40s, variety was the name of the game as magazine racks were inundated with titles covering every conceivable genre of
SPANISH MOSS (A Robineux Mystery) By E.A. Cook Rogue House Publishing 169 pages Sometimes the story of how we received a particular book can be as interesting as the book itself. Several weeks ago we walked into a very small local bookstore. You know the kind, they make most of
BIG TOP TALES Edited by Jim Beard & John Bruening Flinch Books! 168 pages This is such a fun anthology and we want to applaud editors Jim Beard and John Bruening for not only bringing together a half-dozen truly exciting, fresh stories but for coming up with the concept in
LIGHTWEIGHT – Black Death By Nicholas Ahlhelm Metahuman Press 129 pages If you think surviving four years of high school it tough, try doing it as a superhero who can control gravity. That’s Kevin Mathis’s challenge in the second of Nicholas Ahlhelm wonderful series that explores both the angst of
GEORGE WASHINGTON’S SECRET SIX By Brian Kilmeade & Don Yaeger Sentinel Books 232 pages If like us, you are a devoted student of history, the title alone will have you wanting to know what this book is all about. What it reveals, in carefully research documents, is that during the
HUNT AT WORLD’S END (A Gabriel Hunt Novel) By Nicholas Kaufman Titan Books 269 pages We recently participated in an on-line round table forum on how to avoid clichés when writing mystery fiction. Webster’s defines the word as “…a hackneyed expression or idea.” Hackneyed in that it has been repeated
AMAZING – FANTASTIC – INCREDIBLE (A Marvelous Memoir) By STAN LEE and Peter David and Collen Doran Touchstone 192 pages I was a 13 year old comic book reader when the birth of Marvel Comics launched the Silver Age of Comics in the early 1960s. That’s why writer/editor Stan Lee,
THE HUMAN DIVISION By John Scalzi Tor Books 431 pages Rare are the times when a reviewer so loves a book that he or she has to share it with close friends and family, never mind their reading audience. Such was the case years ago when we first read John
