Hard Case Crime Update

From Charles Ardai:

If you visit our Web site -- www.HardCaseCrime.com -- you'll see that a new book has been added: CASINO MOON by New York Times best-seller and Edgar Award-winner Peter Blauner. The book is about criminal activity in and around the professional boxing scene in Atlantic City, and it features a gorgeous painted cover by one-time Golden Gloves boxer Ricky Mujica. It's also a bit of an unusual choice for us to reprint since the book was first published only 15 years back (normally we prefer to choose reprints that have been unavailable for half a century) and is almost 100,000 words long (our books generally run a bit more than half that length). So why are we reprinting this book? Because I love it. The writing is beautiful, the characters memorable, the story draws you in and won't let go...it's a book that deserves to be in print, and it's not, and what's the point of having a publishing line if you can't correct injustices like that?

So when May 2009 rolls around, I hope you'll pick up CASINO MOON and give it the try it very much deserves. You won't be sorry you did.

We've also got some interesting things cooking for the months after May. For now I'll mention just one, a book called PASSPORT TO PERIL by a man named Robert B. Parker. This isn't the same Robert B. Parker who currently writes the Spenser mysteries -- this is a man who died in 1955 and before that was a war correspondent in WWII, sending dispatches from Germany, Poland, Turkey, Spain, Asia, and other parts of the world where peril was the stuff of his daily life, not just fiction. When he returned to the U.S. after the war, he penned a number of novels, including this one, which opens with a desperate couple leaping off the Orient Express into a snowbank to escape the former Nazi pursuing them. The rest of the book leads you on a nightmare chase through the ruined streets of post-war Budapest (a setting Parker knew firsthand and reproduces vividly). It's thrilling, it's gripping, it's exciting...and it's been unavailable for half a century. Next June, it'll be back.

Meanwhile, we've got some exciting books hitting stores now. John Farris' BABY MOLL is a great warm-weather read, taking place as it does in and around a Florida beach compound inhabited by mobsters and their lovely female companions. Ken Bruen and Jason Starr's third collaboration, THE MAX, is just appearing on shelves, featuring the last(?) chapter in the sordid story of would-be criminal kingpin Max Fisher and the unlucky-in-love Angela Petrakos. And in just a few weeks Max Allan Collins' popular hit man, Quarry, will return with the story of his earliest assignment in THE FIRST QUARRY. You can find sample chapters from all three on our Web site.

And then when November rolls around you'll be able to get our big 50th book, FIFTY-TO-ONE, in which I attempt the feat of tying all 50 of our titles together in one climactic comic romp. I'm hoping that even someone who's never read one of our books before will find plenty to enjoy -- but for those of you who have been with us for a while (never mind the die-hard fans who've been with us from the start), I think it'll be a particular treat. More on that one as we get closer to the publication date. (Again, you can find a sample chapter on our Web site.)

One last tidbit, and then I'll let you get back to your regularly scheduled summertime activities: Our pulp adventure series, THE ADVENTURES OF GABRIEL HUNT (www.HuntForAdventure.com), continues to rev up, and I'm pleased to announce that the authors contributing books to the series will include Hard Case Crime veterans Christa Faust (MONEY SHOT) and David J. Schow (GUN WORK) as well as James Reasoner (author of the cult classic TEXAS WIND and two dozen other books) and Nicholas Kaufmann (Stoker Award nominee for GENERAL SLOCUM'S GOLD). And me, of course. How could I miss the chance to write of these myself?

So it's off to Egypt for me, and Greece, and Sri Lanka, all without leaving the comfort of my word processor. I hope your trips -- whether real-world or, like mine, purely in the realm of fiction -- are every bit as exotic and exciting.

Best,
Charles