America – the land of opportunity, a place where economic prosperity beckons: but not for PI Jack Taylor, who’s just been refused entry. Disappointed and bitter, he thinks that an encounter with an over-friendly stranger in an airport bar is the least of his problems. Except that this stranger seems to know rather more than he should about Jack. . .
Roger Smith lives in South Africa. His first book, Mixed Blood, was named one of the best books of 2009, and is now in development for a feature film to star Samuel L. Jackson. His second book, Wake Up Dead received starred reviews by both Publisher’s Weekly and The Library Journal. “Roger Smith reaches another level of unrelenting noir, with all the elements of the genre given homage yet wonderfully mutated. Dark and brutal, the novel has a focused poetic style that stays with you long after you finish reading.” – Ken Bruen, author of The Dramatist and Once Were Cops.
Australian David Rollins first introduced us to Vin Cooper in his novel The Death Trust. OSI Special Agent Vin Cooper is the kind of loose cannon no commanding officer can completely control…or survive without. A Knife Edge followed, and was nominated for the 2007 Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction. His third Cooper story brings us to Hard Rain. All three received starred reviews, and deliver the suspense and drama that will keep your fingers turning pages well into the night. “With intelligence and humor, David Rollins crafts an all-too-believable story about power, corruption, and cover-up that has shocking international consequences.” - Nelson DeMille, author of Night Fall and Wild Fire.
“Fresh from South Africa and Australia we have signed copies of both Roger Smith books, and all three David Rollins titles. These guys are going to be big, and if at some future date you kick yourself for not picking them up at new issue price . . . don’t blame me!” – John Hutchinson, co-owner VJ Books
VJ Books has just received: Martin Limon – G.I. Bones, John Grisham – Ford Country Stories, David Poyer – The Crisis, Ken Bruen – London Boulevard, Lisa Scottoline – Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog, Norb Vonnegut – Top Producer, and Larry Bond – Red Dragon Rising: Shadows of War.
The current generation of Irish crime writers had something of an annus mirabilis in 2008, when John Connolly, Tana French, Ken Bruen, Declan Hughes and Ruth Dudley Edwards were all nominated for prestigious crime-writing prizes in the US and the UK. Connolly, Dudley Edwards and French all took home awards, with French a multiple-award winner, a decent haul for a relatively small group of writers, and particularly as Irish crime fiction has yet to be taken as seriously at home as it is abroad. (more…)
At the start of Edgar-finalist Bruen’s lean seventh Jack Taylor novel, the aging, alcoholic Irish ex-cop, who moved to the U.S. in 2008’s The Cross, knows he really ought to be in America, but he’s staying in Galway because his old police partner, Ridge, has developed breast cancer. Meanwhile, he’s received a “shopping list” of intended victims—two guards, one nun, one judge and one child—from the mysterious “Benedictus.” One is already dead, killed in an “unfortunate hit and run,” according to Superintendent Clancy, Taylor’s best friend from years earlier on the force, who dismisses Taylor’s fear that a serial killer is on the loose. Bruen’s trademark terse style is more perfunctory than not, and parts of the narrative read like an outline, as shown by previous cases synopsized in quick asides. Taylor confronts the unlikely killer in what is a less than convincing showdown. Still, series fans should follow Taylor’s current fall off the wagon, suffused by the mellow glow of Xanax, with the usual passion
Order your signed copy of Santuary by Ken Bruen at www.vjbooks.com
(Publisher’s Weekly, Mar. 23)
Ken Bruen is an Irish writer of hard-boiled and noir crime fiction. Born in Galway in 1951, he spent twenty-five years as an English teacher in Africa, Japan, S.E. Asia and South America. His thirty or so novels include The Killing of the Tinkers, The Magdalen Martyrs, The Dramatist and Priest which was nominated for the 2008 Edgar Allan Poe Award. Help us in welcoming Ken Bruen!