Private Heat

December 17, 2001
While this debut novel, winner of the First Coast Writers Festival's Josiah W. Bancroft Jr. Award, has its faults, it deserves praise for sheer action and suspense. PI Hardin, a retired counter intelligence officer, is asked by a prominent Grand Rapids, Mich., lawyer to protect his niece from her estranged police officer husband, who is likely to beat her up on sight. The husband turns out to be the least of Hardin's worries, as the plot immediately becomes increasingly violent and complex, requiring one to pay close attention to who did what to whom and why or be lost forever. Bailey has a good sassy sense of humor. He also has a peculiar vernacular of his own. For instance, in a scene in which two characters smoke, the author writes, "He started plumbing his costume for a cigarette." Plumbing? His "costume" is a pair of overalls. A few lines later: "I took a long pull on my smoke, extracted it from my face, and looked out over the river." Now, for a bit of local color: "Popsicle sticks weathered to gray and the silver pull tabs from beverage cans littered the ground." Pull tabs on the ground? This detail would seem to set the action a generation or so ago, but in fact period and, for that matter, place are irrelevant in this hard-boiled homage, in which the villains get stacked up like cordwood. Bailey's prose can be eccentric, but there's no denying his narrative drive, which keeps the reader moving right along until the last page. Agent, Andrew Zack.

February 1, 2002
Private detective Art Hardin reluctantly serves as "minder" for a high-class lawyer's niece, who plans to have the abusive cop she's divorcing served with a restraining order. Coincidentally, she may be a material witness in the murder of her boss/lover and the disappearance of millions of dollars. Well-focused episodes feature corrupt cops; the smart-ass niece; her hulking, drug-addicted, and soon-to-be murdered ex-husband; and the opinionated, almost-framed "hero." Clever plotting, crisp prose, and thrilling action commend this to all collections.

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2002
Art Hardin has parlayed his experience as an intelligence agent into ownership of a detective agency in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In this first book in a new series, Hardin agrees to serve as the bodyguard for K. T. Smith, niece of powerful lawyer Martin Van Pelham. Smith had been sleeping with her boss, a securities company official who was found dead at the airport with $11 million missing from the company coffers. If that isn't reason enough to need a bodyguard, Smith is also a victim of abuse from her police officer husband, Randal Talon, with whom she is involved in a bitter divorce proceeding. When the husband is killed after a night of drinking and attempted abuse of his wife, Hardin finds himself arrested for Talon's murder. First-novelist Bailey delivers a well-constructed, action-packed thriller, and he even convinces the reader that Grand Rapids qualifies as a hard-boiled landscape. A series to watch.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)