A Dangerous Man
From AwardAnnals
| Book: | A Dangerous Man: A Novel |
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| Author: | Charlie Huston |
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| Publisher: | Ballantine Books |
Henry has no pity for the slugger and the wicked gambling problem that got him in trouble, but he can’t help liking the guy. After all, Henry used to be just like him: a natural-born ball player with a bright future. But hell, that was long ago. Before Henry did some guy a favor and ended up running for his life. Before his girlfriend and buddies got gunned down by someone on his tail. Before he agreed to buy his parents’ safety with a life of violence.
And when Miguel gets drafted by the Mets and is sent to the Brooklyn Cyclones, Henry must head back to New York, back to the place where all his problems began–and where Henry might find a real reason to keep living, a reason that may just cost him his life.
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“Among the new voices in twenty-first-century crime fiction, Charlie Huston…is where it’s at.” —The Washington Post
“Huston writes dialogue so combustible it could fuel a bus and characters crazy enough to take it on the road.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Huston reminds me of all my favorite writers–Pete Dexter, Robert Stone, Crumley. If there is such a thing as compassionate noir, Charlie has found it. He’s a true marvel.” —Ken Bruen, author of The Guards
“Charlie Huston is the real deal.” —Peter Straub
Reviews
Barnes and Noble
The wildly anticipated conclusion of Charlie Huston’s Henry “Hank” Thompson trilogy (Caught Stealing and Six Bad Things)—a sequence of down-and-dirty pulp noir thrillers with a much-deserved cult following—brings ill-fated New York City bartender turned mass murderer Thompson back to where the chaos all started: the Big Apple.
In disfavor with Russian crime lord David Dolokhov after stealing and then losing more than $4 million in cold cash, the 37-year-old Thompson is unwillingly making amends by working as a hit man in Vegas. With the threat of his elderly parents being brutally murdered hanging over his head, Thompson—with the aid of numerous pharmaceuticals—does his job with callous consistency. But when Dolokhov sends Thompson back to New York City to act as a chaperon for an up-and-coming baseball player with a gambling addiction, he is forced to come face-to-face with perilous ghosts from his past—and for better or worse, Thompson’s wild journey will come to an end…
Fans of gritty pulp noir thrillers by authors like James Ellroy, Lawrence Block, and—more recently—Ken Bruen and Jason Starr would be doing themselves a monumental disservice by not experiencing Huston’s outrageously entertaining trilogy. Featuring sadistic Russian mobsters, Mexican beach bums, meth-addicted rednecks, fanatical Chechen revolutionaries, and heaping helpings of over-the-top violence and drug-induced mayhem, these novels are so damn good they should be illegal. Paul Goat Allen
