Special Offer! Free short story!

Tough As Leather is still for sale at Amazon.com.
As a special offer everyone who emails me the last line of the last story in Tough As Leather receives a free short story featuring Noah Milano, currently not available anywhere else!

Q & A with Paul D. Brazill

Paul Brazill has a new series coming up, Drunk On The Moon. He writes the first novella in the series, other writers will follow up with stories featuring the same character, werewolf / PI Roman Dalton. I ask him some questions...
Q: What makes Roman Dalton different from other (unofficial) PIs?
Apart from being a werewolf, I don't think he is different.

Q: How did you come up with the character?I was inspired by the Tom Waits song, Drunk On The Moon.

Q: What's next for you and Dalton?
Well, we've had a few submissions coming in, so there'll be a new story next month from a different writer.

Q: How do you promote your work?
Oh, I'm all over the internet.

Q: How did the idea of making Drunk On The Moon a series come about and how did you come up with the idea of multiple writers?
I liked what Lee Goldberg did with The Dead Man series.

Q: What are your thoughts on ebooks as a reader AND a writer?
It's the way to go for most mid to lower range writers now. It's great for writers giving a new life to their back catalogue. I don't read ebooks as quickly as paper books but that's probably just an age thing.

Q: What's your idea about the psychotic sidekick in PI novels like Hawk and Joe Pike?
The psycho sidekick does the dirty work and allows the 'hero' to keep clean

Q: In the last century we've seen new waves of PI writers, first influenced by Hammett, then Chandler, Macdonald, Parker, later Lehane. Who do you think will influence the coming generation?
No idea, but there are quite a few influenced by Ken Bruen.

Q: Terry Faherty came up with the following question: Is there a future for the PI subgenre in the face of the current competition from cozy mysteries and police procedurals/crime scene investigation procedurals?
Well, the PI is certainly edgier than those sub-genres but it's still a part of the mainstream.

Q: What question should we ask every PI writer we interview and what is your answer?
How to you avoid writing cliches? Maybe you don't. Maybe you should embrace them!

Misery Bay (Alex McKnight) by Steve Hamilton

Finally Alex McKnight, the PI from Paradise is back. Steve Hamilton did some standalones which were so well-received I was getting worried Alex might never return.
There's no love lost between police chief Maven and Alex, but still the old cop asks for his help in finding out who is killing state troopers and their children, making it look like suicides. What follows is as much a thriller as it is a PI novel and will probably also appeal to fans of the Kellermans or Tess Gerritsen. It read a bit too much like a regular thriller for me, and I could've done without the pretty FBI agent that we see pop up in so many hardboiled novels these days but it WAS good to see Alex and his pals return and hopefully he'll be back soon.

PI stuff around the web this month

There's some interesting things to read on the web right now.
There's a new interview about Noah Milano at Brian Drake's blog. While you're visiting over there, check out his PI novel Bullet For One!
John Lutz talks about Fred Carver, his PI that is back in ebook reprints at Thrilling Detective and Mullholland Books.

Purgatory Chasm (Conway Sax) by Steve Ulfelder

Conway Sax is a fixer for an AA groups, mechanic and former NASCAR driver. He's asked by a friend to retrieve a car that is in a garage but not returned. After a violent encounter his friend seems to have committed suicide. Sax investigates and finds out there's a lot more to his friend than he thought.
Meanwhile he has to come to grips with his estranged alcoholic father and takes on some gangsters.
Sax is an original character. He's a lone wolf kind of character but still has a family. He's tough as nails but not an ex-cop or ex-military type. I figured the story would be quite pulpy but I was surprised by how literate the story turned out to be. Welcome, Conway Sax and welcome Steve Ulfelder!

Highway 61 (Rushmore McKenzie) by David J

David Housewright has been putting out the consistently entertaining Rush McKenzie series for a couple of years now but this is his best.
McKenzie, both rich and an ex-cop does favors for friends. This time he helps out someone who is not exactly a friend. The ex-husband of his girlfriend is being blackmailed, having ended up in a motel with a dead young girl. When McKenzie tries to do something about it he gets involved in a prostitution ring, crazy gangster brothers, arsonists and some of the most powerful people in the Twin Cities.
This is one of the darker books in the series as we see how McKenzie struggles to stay into the light while the problems he faces drag him into the dark further and further.
This novel really has it all, a cool hero, action, a lot of twists and intrigue. This might end up being my favorite PI novel of 2011.