| KILL CITY USA
is a tastily tangled crime-noir. It features a laconic
and appealingly self-deprecating British private
investigator, Joe Milo, his enigmatic Jamaican
sidekick, Jonah, plus a Technicolor cast
of villains, lovers, killers, liars, cheats, bloodsuckers,
and miscreant clowns, with morality and political
correctness as a fool’s distraction. Page-turning
intrigue, character conflict and suspense mixes
with lively, crisp and cutting dialogue and dark
humour, while paying respect to literary noir in
KILL CITY USA. Joe Milo will appeal to readers
who like their private dicks to be hip, tough, politically
incorrect, street-smart, casually efficient, literate,
and to have moral complexity.
 Milo,
like Senator Barry Goldwater, believes that moderation
in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. He has
an agile wit, a remorseless put-down of the second-rate
in people, yet a soupçon of compassion
hidden beneath a sardonically flip exterior. Booze
and women are his recreational pursuits. His conscience
is personal, rather than social, and he uses a
sardonic wisecrack as effectively as his left
hook. His verbal mots justes are used not
for triumphalism, but rather to promote action
and reaction. At heart he is a loner and a sceptic.
Hypocrisy, officialdom, and prevarication he suffers
badly, and he continues the tradition of the American
literary and cinematic-noir PI.
|
|
Milo’s
cryptic, street-wise and taciturn (he thinks Harpo
Marx talked too much) sidekick, Jonah, has a day
job running a testosterone fuelled gym in London’s
Earls Court, and he would have represented Great
Britain as an Olympic boxer, but for 'a slight
misunderstanding about a urine sample.’
KILL
CITY USA is the first in a series featuring
Milo and is set in London and the kaleidoscopic
sideshow of burlesque scenes and characters of
South Beach, Miami, and Detroit (all places where
the author has lived), providing a widescreen
cinematic backdrop for a crime novel.
Throw
in some London villains blackmailing Milo’s
attractive client Jay; a bunch of ex-New York
wiseguys enjoying a life of warmer South Florida
crime, their fronting crematory and funeral home;
Irish Republican gunrunners; eviscerated drug
mules; Pandora’s Detroit transvestite club
The Russian Blue; assorted sleazebags; plus a
pet piranha or two; and try to relax while Cza,
the sexy Miami Cuban FBI Special Agent, decides
whether to lock Milo up, as his trip to Kill City
USA becomes hell on a holiday.
|
