Noticed this out of the corner of my eye a while ago and have been meaning to mention how excited I got when I saw Momentum Books listing some of my favourite J.R. Carroll books and one I've not read before. 8 Hours to Die. These books were unbelievably hard to find when I finally twigged to their existence and in the main I ended up getting copies at second hand bookshops from one end of Victoria to another. Which meant every new find was a thing of real joy. And now, thanks to Momentum I'll be able to start from scratch and reread every one of them. Released early next year. Happy happy happy.
When the past comes knocking, it will not be denied ...
Ex-cop turned criminal lawyer Tim Fontaine and his wife Amy are heading for their weekender a restored farmhouse in remote bushland known as Black Pig Bend.
But even before they’ve eaten dinner, three outlaw bikers arrive on the scene. Suddenly Tim’s house becomes a fortress. Who are these people? Why have they come? Who sent them?
As the lights go out and darkness descends, their idyllic world is transformed into a nightmare from which there is no waking up. Tim must grapple not just with formidable adversaries, but with unsettling questions relating to his own past, both as cop and lawyer, and even to his marriage.
But even if they survive this night against appalling odds, the ordeal is far from over. For when the past comes knocking, it will not be denied …
Big risks, big reward. But no-one ever said that cheating was easy...
Danny Gold has the Midas touch on the roulette tables. Soon he’s making big bucks washing cash for businessman-turned-porn-movie-maker Sigmund Barry, with all the fringe benefits.
Robert Curlewis lived the good life — until booze and smack took hold. When a fellow desperado, Florence, witnesses the vicious slaying of a young gambler in Melbourne’s Chinatown, Robert is no longer wasting his life, he’s trying to hold onto it.
Throw in a wild card, a rogue Kiwi commando running his own agenda, and you have a full deck of players with one thing in common. They are all CHEATERS.
The shockingly violent death of his wife was no accident. And Dennis Gatz knows it. But the cops aren’t interested. Gatz is a loose cannon who couldn’t handle the force. No longer one of them. No longer worth the trouble. But trouble’s on the way. Someone’s out to get Dennis Gatz and he can’t wait to meet them. Head on. This time it’s personal. This time he’ll do anything for revenge. And the best revenge comes out of the blue.
It's September 2000, and the Olympic Games are about to descend on Sydney. The city is at fever pitch, but Barrett Pike, private investigator, couldn't care less.
The excitement in Barrett’s life comes via his part-time squeeze, the glamorous and successful Andrea Fox-Fearnor, and the after-dark activities of Sydney’s notorious criminals in particular, the sartorial stand-over man, Ernesto “Hollywood Jack” Tucci.
When a violent incident at a restaurant in which Barrett’s bull-at-the-gate treatment of an infamous piece of pond scum is witnessed, Barrett is made in an offer even he can’t refuse $150,000 to bodyguard Titus “Bunny” Delfranco, the fastest man in the world. Sounds like easy money, but the sprinter has a million-dollar tag on his head, and an American ex-marine turned bounty hunter, Edward Hickey, is going to have Bunny running for his life. And Barrett, together with his main man, the formidable Geoff O’Mara, is going to have his work cut out staying in the game and staying alive.
Add to this mix a shadowy team of car-bombers, an exotic beauty with gangland connections and a doomsday sect hell bent on revenge, and the result is a complex, nightmarish thriller that pushes the genre about as far as it can go this side of the apocalypse.
No-one can mess with the clan and expect to live... The Killing: An unarmed teenage ram-raider is gunned down by police in a back alley … The Family: The Beatties, one of Melbourne’s most notoriously lawless clans stretching back to the Sixties. Now their youngest is dead, and Melbourne holds its breath, waiting for the payback it knows is coming. The Job: But someone is planning the biggest hold-up in Australia’s history, and no-one, not even the Beattie family, is allowed to get in the way …