KindlePrintReviews

Coldwater by Tom Pitts

Gary and Linda have moved to a modest property in Sacramento after Linda’s miscarriage. They are an everyday married couple; she works for the government as a clerk and he works at an air conditioning supply depot. She wants him to quit smoking and they…
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Book Club

101

Two clueless teenagers show up at a marijuana growing mecca in northern California’s Humboldt County, trailed by trouble in Tom Pitts’s excellent new thriller. A past obligation requires Vic Thomas to take them in, though the area’s paranoid residents, aware that impending legalisation is about…
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KindlePrintReviews

101

Written by Tom Pitts — Book publicists are fond of the awkward adjective unputdownable, but in the case of Tom Pitts’s new California crime thriller, this enthusiastic description is wholly justified. Those familiar with the state will recognise 101 as the highway that runs the…
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News

Hello, is that Vlad? Vlad the Inhaler?

On the Radar — Missing girls, dead children, serial killers, the broken detective… Crime fiction has its clichés, for sure. But our favourite genre always has the scope to throw a curve ball and this week that curve ball is being pitched by Tom Pitts….
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KindlePrintReviews

American Static

Written by Tom Pitts — Steven has a job. He’s a drug mule, carrying weed to San Francisco, travelling there by bus. However, Steven is robbed and the weed is taken. If he doesn’t get them back he’s in big trouble because the drugs aren’t…
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News

Marshes, monkeys, kings and assassins...

On the Radar — Can’t wait to tuck into Karen Dionne’s novel, The Marsh King’s Daughter. It’s said to be like Room in that the main character was born in captivity. Claustrophobic. And it’s said to be like The Revenant on account of it involving…
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KindleReviews

Knuckleball by Tom Pitts

After last year’s triumphant novel, Hustle, San Francisco native Tom Pitts returns with another hard hitting report from the city’s mean streets. Knuckleball is a novella published by American indie One Eye Press, which was already very much on my radar after publishing Chris Leek’s…
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Features

Rough Justice: Top five books of 2014

Trying to decipher trends that have arisen from the year just ended is always difficult. Though I read a lot, I don’t read everything by any means, and many good books might have escaped me. But what I can say is that there were many…
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