The Hard Bounce

November 12, 2012
In this dynamic hard-boiled quasi-PI novel by Robinson, editor of the crime short fiction webzine Thuglit and its anthologies, the burly William “Boo” Malone, with his bouncer friend Darrell “Junior” McCullough, runs the 4DC Security outfit based out of a Boston blue-collar bar called the Cellar. This friendship goes back to the dysfunctional orphanage where they met after a harrowing incident separated Boo from his family. The two are hired by DA Jack Donnelly to find his missing teenage “hell-on-wheels” daughter, Cassie, but have to stay under the news media’s radar since Donnelly is a mayoral candidate. Trading often funny wisecracks, Boo and Junior tangle with Danny Barnes, Donnelly’s ornery chief troubleshooter, before discovering Cassie has been forced to make snuff porn films. Buried emotions resurface when Donnelly insinuates that if Boo finds Cassie, Donnelly might find Boo’s long-lost sister. Determined to get to the bottom of the snuff-porn ring, Boo survives stakeouts, a beating, a shooting, and a run-in with the local mob boss before he and Junior wrap up their first case, neither tidily nor predictably, leaving enough setup for what may become a sturdy new crime fiction series.

January 1, 2013
Boo Malone and his closest friend, Junior, grew up hard in an orphanage where boys formed gangs to protect themselves from other boys, and both were identified as having anger-management issues. Now thirtysomethings, they exercise their issues frequently as bouncers in a louche Boston nightclub. They're surprised when a very attractive young woman and an edgy, angry police detective with his own issues offer them lucrative work tracking down Cassandra, a teenage runaway. Soon they find themselves sparring with a sleazy child pornographer, a candidate for mayor, Boston's most dangerous Irish gangster, and his bercool hit man. Robinson, creator of the website Thuglit, peoples his first novel with a host of imaginatively drawn thugs, villains, victims, and rascals, and he has filled his story with top-shelf tough talk, mayhem, lots of raunch, some laughs, and a vivid sense of place. Readers who enjoy a good wallow in all of the above will feel right at home with The Hard Bounce.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)