Bøker av Anthony Neil Smith

Micah "Slow Bear" Cross returns in another breathless slice of pitch-perfect pulp from noir legend Anthony Neil Smith.After successfully faking his own death, we catch up with Micah "Slow Bear" Cross standing in a field in Nebraska with his boot on the neck of a Ukranian human trafficker.So far, so Slow Bear.After handing out some of his trademark summary justice, Micah finds himself the temporary custodian of two very young, and very scared victims of trafficking.Along with his latest one-night stand Abeline, Slow Bear and the girls launch themselves into a desperate fight for survival as they do all they can to escape the clutches of the ruthless trafficking gang who are out for revenge and restitution.What follows will absolutely delight fans of Anthony Neil Smith and pulp-noir lovers everywhere...

In the Bakken oil field of North Dakota, they call the new guys "worms." Ferret is a worm from Alabama, trying to kickstart a new life for his family, while back home his in-laws whisper break-up songs in his wife Dee Dee's ear. His boss, a shadowy old guy called Pancrazio, drags in Ferret, Gene Handy, and two roustabouts from Oklahoma to deal with a new meth empire on the prairie. Meanwhile, a reservation cop keeps a close eye on the big picture. All Ferret wants is some easy money and the love of his family. But he quickly finds out that there's danger around every corner, in every drill, truck and train car. And if the machines or chemicals don't get him, then the other roughnecks will. Because beneath the dirt and grease, nobody is what they seem. Praise for WORM: "Years from now, Smith will be viewed as one of the best writers of our generation-he's just not capable of writing anything but a fantastic novel." -Les Edgerton, author of The Bitch, The Rapist and The Genuine, Plastic, Imitation Kidnapping "Worm is a tremendous achievement in the portrayal of duplicity and greed in the oil boom. Smith hasn't lost his fastball and he's aiming it right at the reader's head again, the way it should always be." -Benoit Lelievre, Dead End Follies "Smith pushes the characters hard and their flaws are ruthlessly exposed...it brings forward unlikely heroes who emerge from the mire when it becomes deep enough." -Nigel Bird, author of Southsiders "Smith's prose is memorable and cutting; the term you serve in this book with these men is one of pure pleasure." -Rusty Barnes, author of Reckoning and Rednedk "Be entertained, but also be warned. There is a definite human cost to every barrel pulled out of the ground, something Smith makes clear with every blow in Worm." -Ben Sobieck, author of The Invisible Hand

With Choke on Your Lies, Smith presents his homage to one of his favorite detectives, Nero Wolfe, but written for the "internet porn" generation. Octavia VanderPlatts is wealthy, powerful, and "comfortable with her weight"-or to hear her say it, "a rich fat b****." Her IQ is at the genius level, and she uses it to manipulate and frighten anyone who tries to get in her way. She controls an empire built on discrimination lawsuits won against some of the nation's top companies. On top of that, Octavia doesn't care one wink what people think of her. So when she offers her old friend poetry professor Mick Thooft some help in his impending divorce, he smells an ulterior motive. Maybe because Frances didn't invite Octavia to the wedding for fear of her clearing the buffet. Not only does Octavia want to help, but she's got evidence-plenty of scandalous photos. That's not Mick's style, so he turns her down flat...until he discovers that Fran's trying to take their home based on a near-perfect forgery of his signature. After that he and Octavia charge forward, but soon find they're in deeper than they realized-robot pens, swinger clubs, and a blackmail scheme that holds an entire college faculty hostage. Just when Mick and Octavia are on the cusp of victory, it all goes terribly wrong. Mick is framed for murder and someone targets Octavia's immense wealth and secret backyard greenhouse full of exotic marijuana. With no one on their side except Octavia's butler Jennings, her new personal chef Harriet, and their "Amazon Warrior" lawyer Pamela, Octavia and Mick must find a way to turn the tables before they end up broke, humiliated, and in prison. Praise for CHOKE ON YOUR LIES: "What a fantastic rip roaring read. Anthony Neil Smith makes a great case for going to college. If I had known it was so filled with sex, more sex, violence and wicked drama, I might have gone. Really. It is a subtly complex novel that treats its characters with respect even when they are acting completely awful." -Josh Stallings, author of Young Americans "Anthony Neil Smith set his best book yet in one of the country's best known cesspools of corruption and wickedness: academia. There's enough viciousness, backstabbing and sexual depravity among Smith's small-college faculty to make Caligula look like an episode of The Little Rascals. Smith pulls off one of the hardest tricks in all of writing: he fascinates you with characters who, for the most part, are completely unlikable. And yet, you can't look away. Great book!" -J.D. Rhoades, author of the Jack Keller series "What a great book! Anthony Neil Smith riffs on the old Nero Wolfe novels, but completely makes it his own. This book has everything someone looks for in a crime novel. It's the kind of book that makes you want to take a shower after. You're going to cringe, laugh, and be blown away by the plot twists at the end." -Dave White, author of the Jackson Donne series "Choke on Your Lies is a finely-plotted and deftly structured story of a cuckolded husband reluctantly evening the score with an uber be-atch of a wife. The prose sings and the story rings true as the fully-rounded characters slide in and out like an insane chorus of the ill-intentioned. Anthony Neil Smith is shaping up to be one of the sharpest exponents of American noir. Not to be missed." -Tony Black, author of the DI Bob Valentine series

Because Lydia didn't have arms or legs, she shelled out three thousand bucks to a washed up middleweight named Cap to give her ex-husband the beating of his life. But the beating turns to murder, and the murder into lust and desperation between Lydia and an underworld clean-up man. Meanwhile, overgrown frat boy car thieves take up cop killing as a side hobby. When these paths cross, a horror show of violence unfolds as they all slide into a hell of their own design, surrounded by the neon and noise of the casino strip on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Violent, vivid, life at hyper-speed. Psychosomatic is the debut novel from Anthony Neil Smith and it is a noir nightmare that asks how much is too much in a relationship, and what is the cost of leaving? Praise for PSYCHOSOMATIC: "The darkest song I've ever read" -Ken Bruen, bestselling author of the Jack Taylor series "Anthony Neil Smith takes hardboiled, crunches it, peels back the shell, and finishes it off with a flamethrower. You were warned." -Sean Doolittle, author of Safer and The Cleanup

Deputy Billy Lafitte is not unfamiliar with the law; he just prefers to enforce it, rather than abide by it. But his rule-bending and bribe-taking have gotten him kicked off the force in Gulfport, Mississippi, and he's been given a second chance...in the desolate, Siberian wastelands of rural Minnesota. Now Billy's only got the local girls and local booze to keep him company. Until one of the local girls-cute little Drew, bassist for a psychobilly band-asks Billy for help with her boyfriend. Something about the drugs Ian's been selling, some product he may have lost, and the men who are threatening him because of it. Billy agrees to look into it, and before long he's speeding down a snowy road, tracking a cell of terrorists, with a severed head in his truck's cab. And that's only the start... Praise for YELLOW MEDICINE: "On my list of the most original voices in crime fiction today, Anthony Neil Smith easily makes it into the top five. Yellow Medicine is a terrific read, a crime noir bullet-train ride on unsafe tracks."-Scott Wolven, author of Controlled Burn "Yellow Medicine gets its hooks into you from its first turbulent pages. It is the novel's complicated, captivating hero, Deputy Billy Lafitte, who holds you from beginning to end. He's a liar, a cheat and a pretty bad guy, but so richly rendered that, before you know it, you find yourself following him through the darkest of terrains, and eagerly."-Megan Abbott, author of the Edgar-nominated Queenpin "Yellow Medicine starts with one of the most memorable and engaging anti-heroes in recent memory. Mix in bent cops, a psychobilly band called Elvis Antichrist, meth cookers in the Minnesota sticks, and a truly nasty pack of wannabe jihadists. Add a liberal helping of guns, knives and explosives. You're gonna love it."-J.D. Rhoades, author of A Good Day in Hell and Safe and Sound "Anthony Neil Smith has taken the stark, freezing landscape of rural Minnesota and brought it to life with an injection of Louisiana Hot Sauce in the form of Deputy Billy Lafitte. A violent, bawdy, thrilling, edgy, gut-churning masterpiece."-Victor Gischler, author of Go Go Girls of the Apocalypse, Pistol Poets, and the Edgar-nominated Gun Monkeys "Smith deserves credit for taking a risk by creating a character like Lafitte, whose private code of honor-if any-is far more obscure than an anti-hero like Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer."- Publishers Weekly "All in all, though, Smith has a powerful voice and delivers quite a romp, offering along the way a sort of Tony Hillerman glimpse into a part of the country that is not often the subject of crime fiction."-Steve Glassman, Booklist

Billy Lafitte, former Deputy-Sheriff and motorcycle gang enforcer, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. For some of his enemies, that's still not enough punishment. Agents Colleen Hartle and Franklin Rome want Lafitte dead so bad, they've put a price on his head - eighteen grand to the first prisoner who takes him out. Gang leader Ri'Chess and Head Prison Guard Garner want to collect, and they don't mind who gets run over while they try - like inmate Bryce West, a pawn for whoever hurts him the most. Lafitte's church-going ex-mother-in-law believes in redemption... for everyone except Billy, perhaps. But she still believes a son has a right to see the truth about his father, so she brings his boy Ham for what she expects to be their final visit. When they all converge on a half-finished prison on the North Dakota prairie during a blizzard, something bad is bound to happen. The third chapter of the Billy Lafitte saga (following Yellow Medicine and Hogdoggin') tests the limits of everyone whose life revolves around this man and all his deeds. He's a shadow of his former self, but he still fights to survive, if only for spite. Sometimes, being the baddest ass of them all isn't worth it. Praise for THE BADDEST ASS: "It's gonna get bad up in here and it's gonna get sad and it's gonna get just plain nasty. Right now, this sits at the top of my 'Best Thrillers of 2013.'" -Les Edgerton, author of The Rapist, The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping and others "There are going to be the hardcore crowd who fucking love it, and there are going to be people who will never buy Smith's stuff again...I think it's a tremendous novel, the kind of book that would never be published by NY, one of those nasty little underground books that people hold onto with both hands." -Ray Banks, author of the Cal Innes novels and the Farrell & Cobb books

Former Deputy Billy Lafitte is a no-good, grits-for-brains, despicable and dangerous traitor Special Agent Franklin Rome is sure of it. So sure, in fact, that he's willing to investigate outside departmental bounds. Willing to blackmail and bribe his fellow lawmen into helping him. Willing to ferret Lafitte out of whatever snake-hole he's hidden himself in, and do what the too-lax government wouldn't let him do back in Yellow Medicine county, just months ago... And Rome's plan is working. Squeeze a man's ex-wife, especially an ex-wife as unstable as Ginny Lafitte, and watch her overprotective man appear from thin air to stand by his family. No matter that Rome s had to bend a few rules in order to make it happen; Billy's end will justify Rome's means. Of course, Rome didn't count on Billy riding in to save the day on a turquoise motorcycle with a beard, fifty extra pounds of muscle, and the weight of a man named Steel God at his back. Nor did he think Billy would go and get himself caught up with paint-huffing, knife-wielding rednecks. And Rome certainly never predicted that a broken-hearted, vengeful woman named Colleen would be just as hot for Lafitte s blood as he is... Praise for HOGDOGGIN': "Smith's version of Minnesota is no Lake Wobegon; the inhabitants are refreshingly made up entirely of the deranged, the damaged, and the doomed. If you can picture the intellectual and physical mayhem that might have resulted from a Jim Thompson and Harry Crews collaboration, you'd be on the right track. But Anthony Neil Smith is his own writer-and a very fine one, indeed." -Booklist "The book's brutality is exemplified by the blood sport that provides the title, which matches vicious dogs like Rottweilers against helpless pigs. Fans of darkest noir will be most satisfied." -Publishers Weekly "Anthony Neil Smith has long been one of the best of the up-and-coming hardcore crime writers; Hogdoggin' marks his passage into the very front rank..." -Scott Phillips, author of The Ice Harvest "Sex, drugs and rock and roll-kinky FBI agents, steroid ridden bikers and enough musical terrorism to keep your head busy for some time; Anthony Neil Smith's Hogdoggin' is like a killer song you can't get out of your head." -Craig Johnson, author of the Longmire mystery series

Billy Lafitte is back... Back from the brink of death. Back on the Gulf Coast, his home stomping grounds, looking to reunite with his beloved one last time. Back in the sights of DeVaughn Lagrenade, a former gangbanger whose brother was gunned down by Lafitte and his partner during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Back in the mind of his biggest nemesis, Franklin Rome, who swings back into Lafitte's orbit in a most unusual way. Throw in a wild-eyed waitress looking for some violent kicks, an ambitious FBI agent slithering up the administrative ladder, a wannabe bad boy on Lafitte's tail with a young psychopath in the passenger seat, and you've got the makings of a rumble that only a prayer to Santa Muerte might help Billy survive. Cult crime-novelist Anthony Neil Smith is like a modern-day Charles Willeford. He doesn't just step over "the line," but drag-races past it and keeps on going. With this fourth novel in the Billy Lafitte's series, Smith raises the stakes once again for his damaged ex-cop turned stone cold killer. You'll root for Lafitte all the way, and wish you hadn't, and hope to hell he survives so you can do it all again.

It's been three years since Mustafa Bahdoon, one-time leader of the Southside Killaz, saved his fugitive son Adem from the clutches of pirates in Somalia. But when Mustafa is asked to rescue a young girl from the gang's sex trafficking empire, he returns from retirement to seize control once again. But his coup ignites a vicious gang war on the streets of Minneapolis. Meanwhile, still haunted by guilt over the girl he left behind in Somalia, Adem reprises the role of Mr. Mohammed, legendary pirate negotiator. But the CIA is on his tail and he soon finds himself unwillingly enmeshed in a deadly campaign against organized crime. Half a world apart, survival for both father and son depends upon telling friend from enemy, truth from lie, and their own true selves from the roles they must play. Once A Warrior is the highly anticipated follow-up to the award-winning All The Young Warriors. Praise for ONCE A WARRIOR: "A complex book with likeable, complete characters who I was rooting for despite their many faults. THIS is the kind of thriller that should be on every airport bookshelf." -Chris Rhatigan, author of Wake Up, Time to Die "This is a book that can make a long trans-Atlantic flight pass as if it's barely been minutes since take-off. It would be perfect for the beach on a lazy holiday. It's just what you need to take your mind off the cold outside when you're sitting by a fire in mid-winter. It's a great read start to finish wherever you happen to be and whatever the situation." -Nigel Bird, author of Southsiders "The novel takes on some of the most urgent social justice issues of our times: sex-trafficking (making young girls into slave-prostitutes, to be blunt), drug and gang violence, the disillusionment of unwelcome immigrants, the chaos and despair that comes in the blend of terrorism and ungoverned Middle East/African nations and territories...I don't have answers to those questions, and I'm not sure Smith does, either. But he raises the questions, and that may be the more important thing." -Dana Yost, poet and essayist

Winner of the 2012 Spinetingler Award for Best Novel: Rising Star! When two of the Twin Cities' "Lost Boys"-young Somali men drafted to fight for terrorists back in the homeland-kill a pair of cops on his home turf, detective Ray Bleeker is left devastated. One of the dead cops was his girlfriend. The investigation grinds to a halt when he discovers that the young murderers have fled to Somalia to fight in the rebel army. He's at his wits' end until the father of one of the boys, an ex-gang leader called Mustafa, comes looking for answers. Bleeker and Mustafa form an uneasy alliance, teaming up to help bring the boys back home. But little do they know what Somalia has in store for them. Praise for ALL THE YOUNG WARRIORS: "A brilliant book, possibly the best novel of the year." -Les Edgerton "Written with a sureness of hand and a depth of character that are impressive. A highly accomplished crime novel exposing an often unseen world." -The Big Issue "All The Young Warriors will grip readers who enjoy the chance to slip into a foreign culture and also those who want a page-turning thriller" -Spinetingler Magazine "A powerful story that is both riveting and meaningful" -Crime Fiction Lover "This book is a classic in the making" -I Meant To Read That "All The Young Warriors is a pretty rare beast, a clever page-turner. It deserves to be a bestseller and has film adaptation stamped all over it." -Loitering With Intent "A courageous novel that raises a lot of pertinent questions" -Dead End Follies "Smith writes with force and clarity" -The Chicago Tribune "Smith's version of Minnesota is no Lake Wobegon; the inhabitants are refreshingly made up entirely of the deranged, the damaged, and the doomed. If you can picture the intellectual and physical mayhem that might have resulted from a Jim Thompson and Harry Crews collaboration, you'd be on the right track. But Anthony Neil Smith is his own writer-and a very fine one, indeed." -Booklist

The '80s hair-metal band Savage Night is living the rock star fantasy. They trash hotel rooms, run through groupies, and flaunt their goods in music videos with bloated budgets. All that changes while on tour in Japan, when the band learns they owe more money than they have. They discuss their options: add a keyboardist, release a live album, and tour for six straight years in hopes of breaking even. The Drummer chooses a different path. He shaves his head, takes the next flight back, torches the mansion that his stripper ex-girlfriend designed, and fakes his own death. Fifteen years after their collapse, the Singer of Savage Night has tracked down the Drummer in hopes of convincing him to come out of hiding for a reunion tour and second shot at glory. The chase is on, as the press, the Feds, and former bandmates hunt the Drummer down the streets of New Orleans. A novel soaked in sex, drugs, and tequila, The Drummer is a still cocktail of crotch-grabbing hair-metal and New Orleans noir. Praise for THE DRUMMER: "A fun read about drugs, rock and roll, brawls, and banging (drums, groupies, and otherwise)." -Publishers Weekly "If you had any connection with-or nostalgia for-the '80s heavy-metal rock scene, Anthony Neil Smith's The Drummer should be right up your dark alley. Smith writes with force and clarity." -Dick Adler, Chicago Tribune

Hopper Garland is good at finding lost girls. When his last target tries to taker her life upon being discovered, he begins to rethink his career as a private eye. However, a persuasive offer from a sexy woman has him back on the case, chasing a missing sixteen-year-old pregnant girl from the swampy ruins of post-Katrina New Orleans to the neon grime of Las Vegas. Along the way he'll have to contend with a rogue's gallery of henchmen, pornographers, and his own incestuous sister. After he makes a deal with a sociopathic murderer who believes he's found the secret to eternal life, Hopper will relearn that old saw: some things are better off left alone. Praise for XXX SHAMUS: "XXX Shamus is the most transgressive PI novel ever written. It's also one of the best." -Allan Guthrie, author of Two-Way Split "Okay, you tough readers. You like it so raw? Time to put up or shut up. Stick your face into the pages of XXX Shamus. Turn away before the last page and I'll kick your fucking teeth out. Take it. Take it all." -Victor Gischler, author and Marvel Comics writer "Danger. Keep your head and hands inside this ride at all times. Then wash them afterwards. Wish I woulda wrote it." -David James Keaton, author of Pig Iron "Five stars with the proviso that this is an extreme book, and definitely not for those readers of delicate sensibility." -Pearce Hansen, author of Street Raised