By Mark Loeffelholz
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Related tags: 1940s(13), mystery(13), crime drama(13), hard boiled(12), suspense(12), thriller(12), private detective(12), action(12), miami beach(12), oscar jade(4), beach crime, art deco hotels
Review & Description
Welcome to Miami Beach, December 1941...
"Jade's right hand went to the butt of his holstered Smith & Wesson. 'Easy does it, pal. If I were here to kill you, you'd be dead already. And if you pull anything funny out of that desk, I will kill you. I'll explain it all to the cops, and tell your wife she doesn't have to worry about you anymore...and then I'll sleep like a baby.'" - Blood & Ashes, Chapter 4
Oscar Jade is a cynical, down-on-his-luck private detective-with a mysterious past and an uncertain future-who lives and works out of the beachfront Pelican Bar & Grill, where he's behind in his rent on the one-room apartment upstairs. When a good-looking dame hires him to protect her from her husband, Jade must wind his way through a maze of lies, half-truths and betrayals-a sordid minefield of other peoples' mistakes and misdeeds, where one sin builds upon another and somebody down the line, one way or another, ends up getting stuck with the bill. Soon Jade finds himself up against a mob boss with a lethal reputation, squarely in the middle of a deadly no-holds-barred conflict between two rival factions of a New York crime syndicate...
"...Flashing red police lights danced across the brickwork, and men in uniforms kept an expanding semicircle of gawkers at a distance. Sudden death has a way of drawing an audience, like a traveling sideshow. Nobody wants to be the dog-faced boy, but everybody wants a look at one. It was the same way with dead bodies." - Blood & Ashes, Chapter 14
Blood & Ashes is an old-fashioned, hardboiled 'private eye' story; hearkening back to the heyday of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane-a world of cigarettes and booze, heavies and anti-heroes, victims and femme fatales...a world before DNA testing, cell phones and the internet, when a gumshoe's toolbox was limited to shifty street contacts, his skills and his nerve-and, when the time came, the gun in his hand. The story is set on the sun-drenched streets of Miami Beach-playground for the rich, the famous and the notorious-a place where it seems everyone has come to escape something...but sometimes, the past can't forget, and it won't let go. Sometimes it follows you, no matter how far you run-and when you can't run anymore...hire Oscar Jade.
"...You need to get all these stupid ideas out of your head, about how you're gonna be tough guys and not give anything up, 'cause we're not having a picnic, and I'm not gonna to be playing shuffleboard with you here. You're out in the middle of nowhere. Nobody's gonna hear you screaming, or crying, or praying to God. The cops aren't coming to rescue you. This is old country - things have been dying out here for a long, long time, and there's no funerals, or write-ups in the paper. It just gets covered up, and forgotten. You'll be gone, just like the dinosaurs..." - Blood & Ashes, Chapter 19
"Welcome Oscar Jade, and his equally enigmatic creator, Mark Loeffelholz; here are two studs who share in that wonderfully American crime fiction spirit - hell, that American literary spirit: the impulse to enjoy soaking confessions in the dirty pool of high-minded morality, and then hanging those suckers out to dry for all the neighbors to see. I'm cannon-balling back into Blood & Ashes for a second read...just for the fun of it." - John Hospodka, author of South Side Trilogy (www.bohemianpupil.com)
Classic, retro-style crime noir-infused with breathless, high-octane violent action-Blood & Ashes will leave you 'Jaded'...and wanting more. Read more
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