Leisure Books/Hard Case Crime
May 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8439-6246-8
Paperback, 226 pp., $6.99
When a stunningly beautiful woman with a slight Hispanic accent barely has a chance to introduce herself as she approaches Michael Hunt at a Metropolitan Museum of Art reception in honor of a new exhibit on loan from the Hunt Foundation, neither Michael nor his brother, Gabriel, could know it would precipitate gunfire and the woman’s kidnapping. Michael is described as “shorter, younger, and studious-looking rather than ruggedly handsome” and “accustomed to paling into insignificance next to his more dynamic older brother.” Gabriel is decidedly the more adventurous of the two: “He would find Mariella Montez, and he would find out what was behind her kidnapping, and the attack at the museum, and he wouldn’t stop looking until he did.”
Gabriel’s search takes him from Florida to Mexico to the jungles of Central America. But even before that quest can begin, the action immediately goes into high gear [no pun intended] with a high-speed chase over the East River on the Queensboro Bridge, and doesn’t let up till Gabriel’s mission is accomplished.
Hard Case Crime, through Leisure Books/Dorchester Publishing, has their own mission: to revive the beloved genres of pulp crime fiction, which it has already done with over 50 titles and counting, and now pulp adventure fiction. This is the first entry in that endeavor, written in true swash-buckling style by Western author James Reasoner. I must admit to a slight hesitancy as I started this book, not sure an Indiana Jones-style book was for me, but that feeling was quickly dispelled after no more than the first few pages. It all comes off in plausible, exciting fashion. The novel is very fast-faced and well-written, and I’m looking forward to future entries in this series. The next one, Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear, written by Charles Ardai, the erstwhile editor of Hard Case Crime, has an August 2009 publication date, and it should be an equally terrific yarn.
