Here is just a taste of what's out now from Brash Books...and what's to come.
We're kicking off 2024 with a wide variety of new, original crime novels and our eagerly-awaited reprints of incredible hard-to-find mystery and thriller fiction. Here is just a taste of what's out now...and what's to come.
MURDER ON THE DODDER by Keith Bruton
The new, eagerly awaited sequel to Bruton's acclaimed debut The Lemon Man, winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best International Novel and a Deadly Pleasures Magazine Top 10 Paperback of the Year. Here's the story:
TO-DO: Get
Gun Kill Doyle Save Jack
Patrick Callen is a bike-riding hitman with mild OCD trying to save his crumbling relationship with his live-in girlfriend while racing through Dublin to save his kidnapped mentor from execution. The ransom: ticking off a to-do list of murders that will make Patrick a target of the police, the mob, and his closest friends...and doom his romance...if it doesn't get him killed
first.
Praise for The Lemon Man
"A fast-paced crime novel that is both hilarious & hardboiled, its main character both ruthless and oddly sympathetic." ABC News
"Sparkling prose, a well-realized setting, and appealing characters make this offbeat crime novel a winner. Bruton is definitely an author to watch." Publishers Weekly
"Keith Bruton's passion for his hometown of Dublin and for crime fiction shines like a beacon in his glorious debut novel. His quiet, domestic set pieces are as rewarding, and as exciting in some ways, as his riveting action scenes." Mystery Scene Magazine
This month, Brash Books is republishing all four books in James P. Cody's
long-lost D.C. Man series of 1970s-era men's action-adventure novels...starting with Top Secret Kill. But the recent discovery of the true identity of the pseudonymous author is as compelling as the novels themselves.
The D.C. Man series tells the story of Brian Peterson, an ex-military intelligence officer-turned-D.C. lobbyist recovering from his family’s tragic death in a car accident. With his lobbying business in the toilet, he becomes a
political fixer who uses his sharp intellect, his vast political connections, and his lethal combat skills to solve sensitive problems.
The paperback originals were published in the mid-1970s and, over the ensuing decades, became coveted rarities among crime-fiction collectors. A few years ago Tom Simon, then an FBI Special Agent and co-founder of the popular Paperback Warrior website, became obsessed with finding out who "James P. Cody" really was. To
his shock, he discovered that Cody was actually Peter Rohrbach, a Catholic priest of the Carmelite Order who lived, prayed and served in a Washington D.C. rectory...and wrote dark, noir crime novels under a pseudonym in his spare time.
The story of that investigation is told in the introduction of our new edition of Top Secret Kill, the first book in the series.
A propulsive, enthralling historical thriller by
Mike Ripley, the acclaimed author of the new novels in Margery Allingham’s beloved Albert Campion series.
In Britain, the far western edge of Roman Empire, one Celtic tribe rebels against their ruthless oppressors. They are led by Boudica, their widowed queen, on a rampage of violence across the country. Reluctantly at her side is Olussa, a Roman spy struggling with torn loyalties and desperate to survive. But despite Boudica’s initial success, he knows
she and her tribe are doomed. Emperor Nero and the mighty Roman legions will drench Britain in blood to avoid being defeated by a woman.
Praise for Mike Ripley
“Ripley brings it all to life – and, alas, to death – with his customary plotting skill and the quality of his writing.” Colin Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse series
“A sanguinary, rousing, rule-breaking
historical novel.” The Literary Review
“Brutal, foul-mouthed, extraordinarily witty and leaves you thinking that this was exactly what Boudica’s rebellion was like.” Bernard Cornwell, author of the Sharpe series
When ROCK was first published in 1958, future Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Larry McMurtry
wrote “this novel deserves a wider reading than it will likely get,” and he was right. Now this searing, hard-boiled classic is finally back in print.
It is 1958. Max Fallon, fleeing the wreckage of his marriage and career, returns to his lakeside home town and a job as a beach lifeguard. He discovers that his old neighborhood, beneath its seemingly unchanged veneer, is seething with violence, ruled by a brutal group of young men, including his own
teenage brother, that is led by a hard woman who uses her ruthless sexuality as a deadly weapon.
“Wagoner makes an ambitious attempt to deal with the children of our present rock-and-roll generation and, in some respects, he is depressingly successful. The book is a testament of lovelessness, the compassionate record of a warping that has touched a whole generation. It is strong, serious writing about a serious subject.” Larry McMurtry, Wichita Falls
Times
Danny Masters is a teenage magician, pick-pocket and escape artist
who learned it all from his late father. All he wants to do is make it in the big city. But along the way he picks the wrong pocket, stealing a wallet full of stolen cash, and finds himself having to use all of his skills just to stay alive… while still chasing his dreams.
This book became a 1982 movie starring Griffin O’Neal and Raúl Juliá, produced by Francis Ford Coppola and co-written by Melissa Mathison, who later wrote E.T.
