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The Barnes & Noble Review
Dan Simmons is a supremely versatile novelist who is equally at home writing horror (Carrion Comfort), suspense (Darwin's Blade), and far-future science fiction (Hyperion). His latest novel, Hardcase, is a thriller in the hard-edged tradition of Donald E. Westlake's alter ego, Richard Stark, and it's as lean, mean, and tightly constructed as anything I've encountered in a very long time.

The hardcase of the title is Buffalo-based PI Joe Kurtz. (And yes, the echo of Conrad's Heart of Darkness is deliberate.) Simmons sets the tone in the opening chapter when Kurtz, in response to an as yet unspecified provocation, tortures a hoodlum named Eddie Falco, then throws his mutilated body from a sixth-story window. Kurtz, who makes Richard Stark's Parker look like a good-natured seminarian, spends the next 11 years in Attica, where he hones his survival skills to a preternatural degree.

Hardcase tells the story of Kurtz'z reemergence into the Darwinian society of the Buffalo underworld, where a clandestine power struggle between criminal rivals is in full swing. What follows is an over-the-top tale of greed, corruption, vengeance, and betrayal, told in a spare, deceptively simple style. As the newly paroled Kurtz attempts to reconstruct his life, he finds himself embroiled in a multi-layered web of violence and deceit that involves a vivid gallery of Buffalo lowlifes, including: an aging Mafioso and his Machiavellian daughter, a comically inept family of Southern white supremacists, a crooked Mafia lawyer, an array of local gangbangers, and a sadistic albino hit man named, appropriately, Cutter.

The result is a high adrenaline narrative that ends in a spectacularly bloody climax -- a climax which, as Kurtz himself notes, leaves the stage as littered with bodies as the final act of Hamlet. Hardcase isn't by any means Simmons's best or most ambitious novel, but it's a witty, hard-boiled jeu d'esprit by a first-rate storyteller and a master of the unexpected. It might turn out to be the beach book of the year. (Bill Sheehan)

Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub, At the Foot of the Story Tree, has been published by Subterranean Press (www.subterraneanpress.com).

ANNOTATION

Bestselling author Dan Simmons expertly builds the tension as he springs one surprise after another, all the while daring the reader to take a ride with Kurtz through the cold, windy streets of Buffalo where one wrong move could mean a belly-full of lead.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Joe Kurtz has been wronged one too many times. So when he takes out the drug-dealing thug who killed his girl-friend, the ex-P. I. gets to cool his heels for eleven years in Attica. While there he meets "Little Skag" Farino, the son of an aging Buffalo, New York, mob boss. In exchange for protecting the kid's manhood against any unwanted jailhouse affection, Kurtz gets an audience with Little Skag's father upon his release from prison." "Semiretired Don Byron Farino is still clinging to what dwindling power he holds on the New York organized-crime scene. He enlists Kurtz's help to track down the Family's missing accountant - a man with too much knowledge of Family business to have on the loose. But someone doesn't want the accountant found. As the story twists and turns, and the body count rises, Kurtz no longer knows whom he can trust. Everyone seems to be after something, from the mob boss's sultry yet dangerous daughter, to a hit man named the Dane, an albino killer who is good with a knife, and a dwarf who is armed to the teeth and hell-bent on revenge."--BOOK JACKET.

SYNOPSIS

Joe Kurtz has been wronged one too many times. So when he takes out the drug-dealing thug who killed his girlfriend, the ex-PI gets to cool his heels for 11 years in Attica. It's there that he meets "Little Skag" Farino, the son of an aging Buffalo, New York, mob boss. In exchange for protecting the kid's manhood against any unwanted jailhouse affection, Kurtz gets an audience with Little Skag's father upon his release from prison.

Semi-retired Don Byron Farino is still clinging to what dwindling power he holds on the New York organized crime scene. He enlists Kurtz's help to track down the Family's missing accountant￯﾿ﾽa man with too much knowledge of Family business to have on the loose. But someone doesn't want the accountant found. As the story twists and turns and the body count rises, Kurtz no longer knows whom he can trust. Everyone seems to be after something, from the mob boss's sultry yet dangerous daughter, to a hit man named The Dane, an albino killer who is good with a knife, and a dwarf who is armed to the teeth and hell-bent on revenge.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Ex-P.I. Joe Kurtz has just finished a jail term for throwing a bad guy out of a window onto the top of a police car. After his release, he accepts an assignment from a semi-retired Don to search for a missing Mafia accountant. In the course of the quest, Kurtz faces mafiosi, a sadistic druglord, hired killers, gangbangers, a family of retarded Aryan Brotherhood rejects, and a crooked cop, who come with names like Doorag, Cutter, Malcolm Kibunte, and the Dane. Before it's over, the tainted hero has maimed two thugs and killed nine others and committed three acts of arson. There's no letdown from explosive start to hell-for-leather finish in this hard-as-nails detective story. Comparison with Richard Stark's amoral badguy Parker or Andrew Vachss's Burke are inevitable, but Kurtz is more Parker than Burke: there is no sentimentality or excess prose here, just unceasing action with a ragged edge. Simmons (Darwin's Blade, The Crook Factory) has crafted an exceptional tale of nonstop violence and double cross. Watch out, bad guys! Kurtz is here! Enthusiastically recommended. David Keymer, California State Univ., Stanislaus Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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