Category: Crime

THE DEVIL TAKES YOU HOME by Gabino Iglesias!

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The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias is on my to-be-read list.  I’m a fan of Iglesias’ Zero Saints and love the plot of The Devil Takes You Home.  Check it out and see what you think,

From Bram Stoker, Anthony, and Locus award-nominated author, Gabino Iglesias, comes a genre-defying thriller about a father desperate to salvage what’s left of his family, even if it means a descent into violence –both supernatural and of our own terrifying world.

Buried in debt due to his young daughter’s illness, his marriage at the brink, Mario reluctantly takes a job as a hitman, surprising himself with his proclivity for violence. After tragedy destroys the life he knew, Mario agrees to one final job: hijack a cartel’s cash shipment before it reaches Mexico. Along with an old friend and a cartel-insider named Juanca, Mario sets off on the near-suicidal mission, which will leave him with either a cool $200,000 or a bullet in the skull. But the path to reward or ruin is never as straight as it seems. As the three complicated men travel through the endless landscape of Texas, across the border and back, their hidden motivations are laid bare alongside nightmarish encounters that defy explanation. One thing is certain: even if Mario makes it out alive, he won’t return the same.

The Devil Takes You Home is a panoramic odyssey for fans of S.A. Cosby’s southern noir, Blacktop Wasteland, by way of the boundary-defying storytelling of Stephen Graham Jones and Sylvia Moreno-Garcia.

Rarely Told Behind-the-Scenes Facts of the Assassination of President Kennedy!

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If you have any interest at all in the Assassination of President Kennedy, you will want to check out Ten Tales from Dallas’s Parkland Hospital, Where JFK Died by Christopher Dale at Listverse. 

Normally I would pick out my three favorite items from the list.  I won’t this time because each fact/tale of the ten is rare and interesting.  Without giving too much away, Dale’s behind-the-scenes of the Kennedy Assassination tells…

  • Why Jackie Kennedy wouldn’t immediately let the Secret Service take President Kennedy into the emergency room.
  • Why doctors performed procedures that they knew were useless and what Jackie had for them.
  • What a doctor said and immediately regretted.
  • How one of the procedures the doctors performed destroyed potential evidence.
  • Prank calls received at the hospital once it was announced that President Kennedy had died.
  • Why the Last Rites were performed even though the President had died, and how the Priest disobeyed warnings from the Secret Service
  • Why Vice President Johnson delayed an official announcement that President Kennedy had died.
  • Why local authorities struggled with Secret Service agents in an effort to take control of President Kennedy’s body.
  • What happened when President Kennedy’s suspected assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was taken to the same hospital as President Kennedy after being shot.
  • The contents of the self-serving memo released by Parkland Hospital Administrator Charles Jack “CJ” Price less than a week after the murder of President Kennedy.

Hats of to Christopher Dale!

Evidence Points to NEW Suspect as the ZODIAC KILLER!

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Speculation as to who the Zodiac Killer was, is always a popular topic.  There are so many folks who have done extensive research and most often they come up with the usual suspects.  Not so with Jarett Kobek.  Kobek did the research, but facts led him down a different path to a new, viable suspect named Paul Doerr. 

Tim Molloy at MovieMaker provides an excellent overview of Kobek’s findings in his piece Zodiac Killer Revealed by His Love of Comic Books, Author Says.  Molloy’s article is definitely worth a read.  It details how a card sent to police/newspapers listed four ways the Zodiac planned to kill: “By Fire, By Gun, By Knife, By Rope”.  Many Zodiac researchers linked the quote to the 1952 Western comic book, Tim Holt #30.  Kobek took this finding and ran with it.

Kobek realized that the number of comic book collectors at that time was relatively small.  His next step was to start researching comic book fanzines of the era.  Paul Doerr’s name came up in letters to the fan magazines.  His writing style and the content of his letters struck Kobek as being similar to the Zodiac’s.  Then Kobek discovered that Doerr was on the mailing list for renaissance fairs.  Of course in one of the Zodiac attacks he was wearing a Medieval executioner’s hood.  In other letters Doerr talks of killing and making a bomb.  Click over to Molloy’s piece for full details.

Jarett Kobek’s book, How to Find Zodiac lays out the evidence leading to his belief that Doerr was the Zodiac Killer.  Here’s the synopsis…

“A scruffy masterpiece of criminology. It seems to me that either Kobek’s painstaking deductions are correct, or we must urgently revise the laws of probability.” – Alan Moore, author of From Hell

Dear Reader,

This is not the Zodiac speaking. The one thing that I ask of you is this, please read this book. It is called How to Find Zodiac. Being that this book is about the Zodiac, it offers a new suspect. The theory is probably correct. At the moment the theory is unproven. But the idea is a bomb waiting to go massive. Can you see the flaws in the hunting method or will you just agree and say case closed. Either way one thing is true. Zodiac can never look and seem the same after you read this book. It was written by Jarett Kobek.

It will be interesting to see how Zodiac researchers react to Kobek’s research and suspect.

MURDER IN GREASE PAINT by Whiskey Leavins

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Usually I like my crime fiction to be hardboiled and serious.  But there are times when a bigger helping of humor is a nice change of pace.  Murder in Grease Paint by Whiskey Leavins looks to be a prime example.  I loved Leavins’ The Devil’s Own Piss and Other Stories. So picking up his latest offering is a no-brainer.  Check out the synopsis and see what you think.

Washed up pitching prospect, Rock Cobbler, now a hotshot detective with the Santa Lacrimosa PD likes working alone as much as he likes bourbon. That is to say, a lot. One rainy night at Santa Lacrimosa Clown College he finds himself looking out a dorm room window. Down below lay the hilariously twisted body of Mr. Rubadubdub, apparently tossed from that very same window.

The investigation into the defenestration of the promising young clown will lead Rock through dive bars, contemporary Christian clowning performances, and down into the seedy underbelly of clown lore. He will discover what no non-clown should know; like the existence of dangerous, rival clown factions that will stop at nothing in search of clown dominance and the possession of one particular venerated clown relic. To crack the case, he will have to match wits, and game, with the alluring Professor Wiggles. Will Rock take a pie to the face? Or will he solve the case before more clowns die?

Murder in Greasepaint is equal parts Chandler, Christopher Moore, Bozo, and Bourbon.

“There Are No Saints” – The Poster and Trailer are Here!

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Ignore the boring poster and instead check out the trailer for There Are No Saints starring Jose Maria Yazpik, Ron Perlman, Tim Roth, Neal McDonough, Tommy Flanagan and Paz Vega with a screenplay by Paul Schrader  directed by Alfonso Pineda Ulloa.

Looking to start a new life, a former hitman nicknamed The Jesuit (Jose Maria Yazpik) is unable to escape the sins of his past. With enemies on both sides of the law, he has nowhere to turn when his only son is kidnapped by a ruthless cartel boss (Ron Perlman). He’ll stop at nothing to save his boy in this gritty action-thriller from the writer of TAXI DRIVER.

HELL CHOSE ME by Angel Luis Colón

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I’ve been on a roll finding new (at least to me) excellent crime fiction authors/books.  Today we have Hell Chose Me by Angel Luis Colón. My order is in.  Check out the synopsis and see what you think.

Bryan Walsh is a killer for hire. He is haunted by those who have fallen by his hand. He will stop at nothing to avenge his brother’s death.

When a lifetime of bad karma finally lands on Bryan’s doorstep and leaves his brother dead, he must survive long enough to find the killers and get his revenge, but as the path only grows bloodier, Bryan may not be able to handle the steps he’ll need to take against his enemies.

As he becomes more unstable and his past crashes into his present, Bryan must decide if vengeance is worth becoming the monster he always denied or if he could find a another path; one that could lead to something like redemption.

AT THEIR OWN GAME by Frank Zafiro

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At Their Own Game by Frank Zafiro arrived at my house yesterday.  If it sounds like something you’d like, you know what to do.

Book #1 in the SpoCompton Series

Jake Stankovic has been flying below the radar for years, dealing safely in stolen property crime with his two-man crew. But times are tough, so he decides to step up to the big money with a drug deal. Everything that can go wrong, does. The deal goes bad, a vengeful detective sets his sights on Jake, one of his crew might be a turncoat, and a woman from a long past affair suddenly reappears. All of this would be complicated enough on its own, but for Jake, it’s even worse.

The woman is the detective’s ex-wife.

And Jake Stankovic used to be a cop.

Now Jake must face new problems and old vendettas in an all-in proposition with lives on the line. He has to find a way to get his money back, keep the girl, and beat everyone involved… At Their Own Game.

CARBON by Andrew Vachss!

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Andrew Vachss with his Burke crime novel series instantly became one of my must-read authors.  That was over 35 years ago.  As time went on Vachss continued to write about Burke and his crime family, but he also branched out into other genres and formats.

When I recently saw that Mr. Vachss had a new novel, Carbon, coming out, I was excited to see what it would be about.

I was surprised to read that it would be a futuristic tale.  Then I read the synopsis…

RELENTLESS POWER. HARDCORE ACTION. A CLASSIC, HARD-BOILED VIEW THROUGH A FUTURISTIC LENS.

In The City, government is God—in The Sector, anarchy rules.

The Membrane stands between those worlds. Some cross it to The Sector, seeking the forbidden. Some cross it to The City, seeking a chance to see the sky. Some try to stay. Most die trying.

In a world without paper, names are earned. Sector-born Carbon once risked everything for a chance to live in The City, a world with fresh paper and retinal enhancements that required a price beyond the ability of any Sector-born to earn alone. Captured, he entered prison.

Now, released to find a killer whose pattern threatens the government itself, Carbon’s real search is for the money stashed by his former gang.

But only one woman knows that location, and she isn’t willing to trade information unless she gets something in return—her abducted child. The child is somewhere in the Pure Zone, a wild place where sorcery works but firearms do not.

Trapped between hostile worlds, Carbon will enter the Pure Zone—hyper-focused and fatal to anyone blocking his path.

Carbon, sounded a bit too fantastic for my taste… yet it was Andrew Vachss.  So I read the free sample at Amazon and Carbon is now on my “get list”.  Check it out and perhaps Carbon will be on yours as well.

FRANK LEE, AFTER ALCATRAZ by David Hasteda and Ludovic Chesno is Coming!

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Frank Lee, After Alcatraz by writer, David Hasteda and artist, Ludovic Chesno looks and sounds interesting.

In June 1962, Frank Lee Morris did the unthinkable and broke free from Alcatraz prison! Celebrating the 60th anniversary of his incredible escape, this thrilling graphic novel imagines what Frank Lee did next…

Bank Robber. Escape Artist. Genius.

But on June 11th 1962, Frank Lee Morris performed the most daring feat of them all: escaping from Alcatraz. He was never found, presumed to have drowned in San Francisco Bay. The FBI’s case remains open to this day.

But what if he survived that fateful night? A free man. A second chance. What did he do then? Follow Frank in this stunning graphic novel on his journey from villainous convict to finding sanctuary and starting a new life, full of heartache, sorrow and a profound bittersweet acceptance.

Immortalized by Clint Eastwood in the 1979 film, Escape From Alcatraz, writer David Hasteda and artist Ludovic Chesnot imagine just what Frank’s life might have been like after performing one of the most dangerous escapes of all time.

Below are a couple of preview pages.  You can see more on Amazon and if you’re so inclined pre-order.  Frank Lee, After Alcatraz will be released on June 28, 2022.

“Under the Banner of Heaven” Starring Andrew Garfield – The Trailer is Here!

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I haven’t read Under the Banner of Heaven, the bestselling book by Jon Krakauer, but the trailer for the upcoming limited series based on it looks good.

This goes beyond just a murder. Watch the OFFICIAL TRAILER for FX’s Under the Banner of Heaven, starring Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, and Daisy Edgar-Jones. Premieres April 28. Only on Hulu.

From Executive Producer and Academy Award® winner Dustin Lance Black.

Subscribe now for more Under the Banner of Heaven clips: http://bit.ly/SubscribeFX

“Under the Banner of Heaven” is an original limited series inspired by the true crime bestseller by Jon Krakauer, which follows the events that led to the 1984 murder of Brenda Wright Lafferty and her baby daughter in a suburb in the Salt Lake Valley, Utah. As Detective Jeb Pyre investigates events that transpired within the Lafferty family, he uncovers buried truths about the origins of the LDS religion and the violent consequences of unyielding faith. What Pyre, a devout Mormon, unearths leads him to question his own faith.

“Ozark”: Season 4 Part 2 – The Trailer is Here!! 

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Whoa!  Ozark: Season 4 Part 2 Trailer!!  How powerful was that?  I cannot believe that they gave away a major incident (or so it appears).  I cannot wait!

Facing threats from all sides, Marty and Wendy fight to keep their family together, appease the cartel and the FBI — and leave the Ozarks for good.

The end justifies the means. Ozark Season 4 Part 2 – the final episodes – premieres April 29, 2022.

I’m Going to the GUNSHINE STATE (by Andrew Nette)

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Gunshine State by Andrew Nette has been getting props for a while now and I actually meant to order it before now.  Gunshine State currently has no rating below 3 of 5 stars and 89% rate it 4 or 5!  Here’s the synopsis…

Gary Chance is a former Australian army driver, ex-bouncer and thief. His latest job takes him to Surfers Paradise, Queensland, working for aging standover man, Dennis Curry. Curry runs off-site, non-casino poker games, and wants to rob one of his best customers, a high roller called Freddie Gao.

The job seems straightforward but Curry’s crew is anything but. Frank Dormer is a secretive ex-soldier turned private security contractor. Sophia Lekakis is a highly-strung receptionist at the hotel where Gao stays when he visits Surfers Paradise. Amber, Curry’s female housemate, is part of the lure for Gao. Chance knows he can’t trust anyone, but nothing prepares him for what unfolds when Curry’s plan goes wrong.

If you like what you’ve read and want in, click here!

Michael Bay’s “Ambulance” – The Second Trailer is Here!

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Whoo-hooo!  Hold on for Michael Bay’s Ambulance – the second trailer is here!  Count me in for the ride!

Over one day across the streets of L.A., three lives will change forever.

In this breakneck thriller from director-producer Michael Bay, decorated veteran Will Sharp (Emmy winner Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Candyman, The Matrix Resurrections), desperate for money to cover his wife’s medical bills, asks for help from the one person he knows he shouldn’t—his adoptive brother Danny (Oscar® nominee Jake Gyllenhaal, Zodiac, Spider-Man: Far From Home). A charismatic career criminal, Danny instead offers him a score: the biggest bank heist in Los Angeles history: $32 million. With his wife’s survival on the line, Will can’t say no.

But when their getaway goes spectacularly wrong, the desperate brothers hijack an ambulance with a wounded cop clinging to life and ace EMT Cam Thompson (Eiza González, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, Baby Driver) onboard. In a high-speed pursuit that never stops, Will and Danny must evade a massive, city-wide law enforcement response, keep their hostages alive, and somehow try not to kill each other, all while executing the most insane escape L.A. has ever seen.

Ambulance is produced by Michael Bay, p.g.a., Bradley J. Fischer, p.g.a. (Zodiac, Shutter Island) for New Republic Pictures, James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, 2022’s Scream) and William Sherak (Ready or Not, 2022’s Scream) for Project X, and Oscar® nominee Ian Bryce (Transformers franchise, Saving Private Ryan).

The screenplay is by Chris Fedak (Prodigal Son, Chuck), based on the original story and screenplay for the 2005 Danish thriller Ambulance by Laurits Munch-Petersen and Lars Andreas Pedersen.