A Case Of Noir
Over at BOOKS FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, Susan Hampson says:
‘This is just the second Paul Brazill book that I have read but I have already gone on to buy another two. Absolutely brilliant writing. I really am loving these books. So very highly recommended and addictive.’
I have a fistful of eBooks that you can pick up for a mere 99p at Amazon.co.uk
Too Many Crooks
When high-class fence Leslie Hawkins meets Peter Rhatigan in a sleazy London pub, he offers her the chance to get her hands on the Totenkopfring, a legendary piece of World War Two memorabilia. However, after a violent encounter with a member of a biker gang, things soon spiral wildly and dangerously out of control. Meanwhile in Poland, Dr Anna Nowak finds an amnesiac Englishman half-dead in the snow…
Too Many Crooks by Paul D. Brazill is a fast-moving and action-packed cocktail of bodies, bullets and death-black comedy.
In snow smothered Warsaw, Luke Case, a boozy English hack with a dark secret, starts a
A Case Of Noir
dangerous affair with a gangster’s wife. Case escapes to the sweltering Spanish heat where he meets a colourful cast of characters, including a mysterious torch singer and a former East End villain with a criminal business proposition. While in stormy Toulouse, he encounters a blast from the past that is positively seismic which forces him to return to England and confront his past.
Kill Me Quick
Seatown may not have a lot going for it – apart from the Roy Orbison lookalikes and Super Seventies Special every Thursday night, of course – but it is at least the place Mark Hammonds calls home. And after a decade away, it’s the place he returns to when he has nowhere else to go.
From dead bikers to dodgy drug deals, from one downbeat bar to another, from strippers to gangsters and back again: the luckless former musician bounces from one misdeed to the next along with a litany of old acquaintances, almost as though he never left. And if only he can shake off everybody who wants to kill, maim or otherwise hurt him, maybe he could even think about staying.
English writer Paul D Brazill’s 13 Shots Of Noir is a collection of short stories in the vein of
Roald Dahl, The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.The first story, “The Tut”, was nominated for a 2010 Spinetingler Award, while the story “Anger Management” was chosen as one of the Predators and Editors top twenty crime stories.
Crime, horror and dark fiction are contained within the pages of 13 Shots Of Noir.
A Case Of Noir
And says:
‘Reading Brazill gave me the same sort of enjoyment I get when reading Jim Thompson, characters filling their desperation with alcohol, fornication, and crime. As with Thompson, Brazill knows that the human condition is weak and is punctuated with violence and/or death.’
A Case Of Noir
Over at Amazon.co.uk:
A Case Of Noir
In snow smothered Warsaw, Luke Case, a boozy English hack with a dark secret, starts a dangerous affair with a gangster’s wife. Case escapes to the sweltering Spanish heat where he meets a colourful cast of characters, including a mysterious torch singer and a former East End villain with a criminal business proposition. While in stormy Toulouse, he encounters a blast from the past that is positively seismic which forces him to return to England and confront his past.
A Case Of Noir is a strong shot of blackly comic international noir from Paul D. Brazill.
You can get the eBook of the rebooted A CASE OF NOIR (NEAR TO THE KNUCKLE) from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and any other Amazon. The paperback is on its way.
The eBook of the all-new A CASE OF NOIR is available for pre-order and it’s only 99p!
Here’s the blurb:
In snow smothered Warsaw, Luke Case, a boozy English hack with a dark secret, starts a dangerous affair with a gangster’s wife. Case escapes to the sweltering Spanish heat where he meets a colourful cast of characters, including a mysterious torch singer and a former East End villain with a criminal business proposition. While in stormy Toulouse, he encounters a blast from the past that is positively seismic which forces him to return to England and confront his past.
A Case Of Noir is a strong shot of international noir from Paul D. Brazill.
You can grab it from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and any other Amazon that takes your fancy. The paperback is on its way.
There’s a lot of it about.
First up, the paperback of TOO MANY CROOKS is out now! You can grab it at BARNES&NOBLE, AMAZON, and a few other places, I’m sure,
Also, the paperback of COLD LONDON BLUES is now available from Amazon.com
A CASE OF NOIR will soon be given a reboot from those classy folk at NEAR TO THE KNUCKLE. It should be out early on in March.
SHOTGUN HONEY will be publishing one of my yarns in early March. It’s called SMALL TOWN CREED.
NICK SWEENEY is over at POLSKI NOIR at the moment.
My latest BRIT GRIT ALLEY column is up at OUT OF THE GUTTER ONLINE.
And I currently have a guest blog – and eBook giveaway – over at DEBBI MACK’s CRIME CAFE where I talk about flash fiction. Check out KISS.
‘Luke Case is every bit the worthy protagonist of this archetypal piece of noir. His capacity for hard living is only just surpassed by his will to survive, in this fast-moving Euro-crime caper. Case doesn’t so much step on toes, as climb all over the clutches of the various gangsters he meets along the way, making his way from Poland to Spain and ultimately back to England to try and settle a particularly demanding debt. The characters are vibrant, the dialogue sharp and witty and the denouement an absolute gem. A Case Of Noir is stylish, compulsive throughout and despite all the casually wicked stuff that happens, you can’t help but smile broadly at the denouement. Cracking stuff.’
A Case Of Noir
‘Paul D. Brazill’s world here is one of peroxide Berliner blondes wearing PVC raincoats with blood red lipstick smeared across their lips. Barbarous gangsters and shyster scam artists, drunken literary agents and pop producers shelter in cities ruined by war and Vodka, drenched by decadence, spent of hope, driven by desire.’
Luke Case, the story so far …
N2TK
Over the last few weeks, A Case Of Noir has nabbed some some very tidy reviews over at Amazon.
Mark Hammonds says: ‘Brazill writes like Sid James chortles’.
Bluebell says: ‘This book is so well-written, sharp, intelligent and intriguing.’
A.W. Shaw says: ‘Populated by misfits and mischief this is a gritty, witty masterpiece.’
Nice!
!
Some stuff to spend your Xmas dosh on.
My comic crime caper Guns Of Brixton (published by Caffeine Nights Publishing) is out NOW as a paperback and as an eBook. You can get it from from loads of places including Barnes & Noble, Ca
ffeine Nights Publishing, WHSMITH, Waterstones, Foyles, Amazon and Amazon UK.
The Blurb:
A foul-mouthed, violently comic crime caper, full of gaudy characters and dialogue sharp enough to shave with
When London gangster Mad Tony Cook gives aging thugs Big Jim and Kenny Rogan the simple task of collecting a briefcase from northern courier Half-Pint Harry he doesn’t suspect that the courier will end up dead in his lock-up, or that Kenny and Big Jim will then dress up in drag to rob a jeweler’s shop and lose the coveted briefcase. A fast-moving, wild, and hilarious search for the missing briefcase quickly ensues, with fatal consequences.
A Case Of Noir by Paul D. Brazill.
Published by Lite Editions. In snow smothered Warsaw, Luke Case, a boozy English hack with a dark secret, starts a dangerous affair with a gangster’s wife. Case escapes to the sweltering Spanish heat where he meets a colourful cast of characters, including a mysterious torch singer and a former East End villain with a criminal business proposition. In stormy Toulouse, he encounters a blast from the past that is positively seismic which forces him to return to England and confront his past. A Case Of Noir is a strong shot of international noir from Paul D. Brazill.
Exiles: An Outsider Anthology. Ed. Paul D. Brazill.
Exiles is a collection of 26 short stories, all featuring the common theme of ‘outsiders’. Dedicated to Jeff Luke and Colin Graham. All proceeds go to the Marfan Foundation, in aid of people suffering from Marfan syndrome. Contributors: Heath Lowrance, Colin Graham, K. A. Laity, Chris Rhatigan,Steven Porter, Patti Abbott, Ryan Sayles, Gareth Spark, Pamila Payne, Paul D. Brazill, Jason Michel,Carrie Clevenger, David Malcolm, Nick Sweeney, Sonia Kilvington, Rob Brunet,James A. Newman,Tess Makovesky, Chris Leek,McDroll,Renato Bratkovič,Walter Conley, Marietta Miles, Aidan Thorn, Benjamin Sobieck, Graham Wynd, Richard Godwin. Published by Blackwitch Press.
‘ The bookshop was jam-packed and stuffy. The wine and conversation were overflowing in equal measure. Keith Jarrett’s ‘Standards’ played numbly in the background as a veritable cornucopia of crime fiction writers of various levels of success held court in different parts of the room, shuffling nervously behind tables cluttered with copies of their latest pot-boiler. Their faces were frozen into rictus grins.
‘Bullets in the Bookshop’ was an annual event. An international meeting of writers and crime fiction groupies organised by Blackstones’s Bookshop in Cambridge, an archetypically quaint English bookshop on an archetypically quaint cobble-stoned English street, not far from King’s College. The non-writers were in the majority, of course. Most of them were spinsterly types of both sexes enthusing over Nordic Noir— whatever that was. Then there were also a few academics slumming it — one particularly dandruff speckled gent with the complexion of a blackcurrant crumble was talking loudly and authoritatively about crime fiction as a social novel and receiving a number of approving nods. And, of course, a few wannabee crime writers were there, too, trying to look mean and moody — all leather jackets, stubble and gently sneering. I even recognised a couple of the faces from the Quais Du Polar crime fiction festival in Lyon that I’d attended in the Spring.
Not that I was a connoisseur of crime fiction. I rarely read fiction at all, in fact. I’d attended the Quais Du Polar in order to meet up with Lena K, the torch singer turned bestselling crime writer who was also my partner in several unlawful activities. And I also had an ulterior and particularly criminal motive for being in Blackstone’s. A meeting with the man who was holding court at that moment.
Julian Stroud stood behind the largest table in the room and clearly thought a lot of himself. He was tall, handsome man in his mid-fifties and painfully well dressed. A pair of half-moon spectacles hung around his neck and he had the look of someone who had just smelt one of his own farts and found it surprisingly rank.
‘Why kill time when you can kill other people,’ said Stroud, the shadow of a smirk creeping and crawling across his too-tanned face. ‘Although, only on paper, of course, eh?’’
Read the rest of A CASE OF NOIR by buying it here or elsewhere.
‘In snow smothered Warsaw, Luke Case, a boozy English hack with a dark secret, starts a dangerous affair with a gangster’s wife. Case escapes to the sweltering Spanish heat where he meets a colourful cast of characters, including a mysterious torch singer and a former East End villain with a criminal business proposition. In stormy Toulouse, he encounters a blast from the past that is positively seismic which forces him to return to England and confront his past. A Case Of Noir is a strong shot of blackly comic international noir from Paul D. Brazill.’
