New Interview with RAIN DOGS author Baron R. Birtcher

Claymore award finalist Baron Birtcher has been interviewed by Clay Stafford, founder of the Killer Nashville mystery conference.

  

The full interview can be found on our Author Interviews page, and on the Killer Nashville Blog!

2013 List-Toppers!

2013 has been a great year for us at The Permanent Press, with many of our titles landing spots on several different "best of" lists!

Chris Knopf's CRIES OF THE LOST (sequel to the Nero Award winning DEAD ANYWAY) was named one of the Top 5 Mysteries of 2013 by Library Journal.

Gwen Florio's MONTANA was called one of the  Best Montana books of 2013 by The Great Falls Tribune!

MONTANA also made Entertainment Realm's Top 20 Books of 2013 along with THE INBETWEEN PEOPLE by Emma McEvoy and NOTHING SERIOUS by Daniel Klein.

Leonard Rosen's THE TENTH WITNESS (the highly anticipated prequel to the Edgar Award finalist ALL CRY CHAOS) made 

The Boston Globe's list of Best 2013 Crime FIction!

And our 2011 title THE DOUBLE LIFE OF ALFRED BUBER by David Schmahmann was named the winner of the Dactyl Foundation 2013 Literary Fiction Award! 

Free .pdf copies of ALFRED BUBER available now for a limited time. See Marty's blog for more details.

Praise for The Tenth Witness in Kirkus Reviews magazine!

 

"Years before the events of Henri Poincaré’s striking debut (All Cry Chaos, 2011), the future Interpol agent, now a consulting engineer, gets dragged into an equally grueling case when his treasure hunt turns into a Nazi hunt.

Lloyds of London, which was the insurer for the HMS Lutine when it sank off the Dutch coast in 1799, think it’s high time they recovered their settlement by plundering the boat, which is legally theirs, for its cargo of gold. Poincaré and his partner, Alec Chin, have successfully bid to construct a diving platform to be used in the operation. But Poincaré gets seriously redirected when he meets Liesel Kraus, a guide who pulls him out of the coastal mud flats and insists that he escort her to her brother Anselm’s birthday party to fend off the Bayer heir Anselm’s fixed her up with. Romance blossoms between Liesel and Poincaré, along with dark suspicions about the Kraus family’s steel empire, when Anselm, intent on jumping into the infant market for personal computers by recycling the precious metals used in their manufacture, engages Poincaré to develop a chemical process for isolating those metals. If Anselm and Liesel’s father, Otto, was really a Schindler-style hero during the war, as an affidavit signed by 10 concentration-camp survivors attests, then why are the signatories suddenly dying of heart attacks? And why is Liesel’s godfather, Viktor Schmidt, so eager to shut down Poincaré’s investigation into this case that isn’t even a case? Torn between his love for Liesel and his need to learn the truth about her family, Poincaré makes a series of discoveries that won’t surprise genre fans or anyone who stayed awake during history class.

If it’s hard to wring new headlines from Nazi industrialists, Rosen uses this familiar background to tell a story as heartfelt as it is ambitious."

 

Summer Reviews

It's been a busy Summer here at The Permanent Press. Here's what critics are saying about some of out biggest new releases:

THE PHILADELPHIA QUARRY - Howard Owen

"Owen is particularly good at character development and takes a familiar race and class struggle plot to a new level. His second entry featuring crime reporter Willie Black (after the Hammett Prize finalist Oregon Hill) is a stellar mystery deserving of a wide readership." --Library Journal, Starred Review

"Narrator Willie, who charmed readers in Oregon Hill (2012), is a hard drinking, old-style newsman who still takes notes with pen and pad and takes his chances with the powers-that-be to get at the truth. A well-plotted mystery elevated above the norm by Owen's mastery of character development and his creation of a compelling hero." --Booklist

"Against a backdrop of advertising-suppressed investigative print journalism, Owen uses race and class, coupled with a Faulkner-ian family tragedy, to provide a powerful narrative engine. While the complex noir drama keeps the pages turning, the murderer and motivation complete the storyline perfectly. A quick-flowing crime drama that will have fans eager for Willie Black to right another injustice." --Kirkus

"A modern noir mystery with convincing characters, evocative locations, and a wonderful feel for the changing world of news, ,The Philadelphia Quarry offers a plot that's neither overly complex nor too simple, while exploring the relationships of parents and children through families rich and poor, black and white, and in-between." --Café Libre

PAINT THE BIRD - Georgeann Packard

"Packard's book layers symbolism on its pages, but it's also an entrancing exercise in employing language to explore and define the nature of love and the meaning of life framed against death. The lyrical narrative edges toward the surreal, however, beginning to end, the novel is a deeply poetic meditation 'About life, about trust. About God. About death.'Brilliantly imagined and rendered." --Kirkus, Starred Review

"The story reads like a prose poem. Emotional significance comes across in the sparsely told daily machinations of the lives of a few intentionally but tenuously connected New Yorkers. Packard (Fall Asleep Forgetting) weaves a dreamy yet well-paced narrative with richly developed characters who gradually come to discover that life is always going on, whether they're watching or not." --Publishers Weekly

"Highlighting a unique intersection of the gay, artistic, and religious communities, Packard challenges readers to look closely at their beliefs about death, sexuality, and the constructs of family. Rich descriptions of art and overt sensuality lend beauty to this provocative story of loss and hope." --Booklist

RAIN DOGS - Baron R. Birtcher

"Birtcher combines a gritty, action-filled thriller with a nuanced, almost contemplative character drama... Thoroughly entertaining."   ---Booklist

"Combining vivid scenes, sympathetic characters, and graphic descriptions, Birtcher catapults readers to the center of the action."   ---Entertainment Realm (2013 Summer Book Picks)

"Rain Dogs is a is a thriller with genuine shocks and chills. A combination of gritty realism and lyrically descriptive prose draws the reader in. The danger is plausible and palpable. But an anchor of humanity remains...  a novel that keeps [you] enthralled and uncertain from beginning to end."   ---Cafe Libri

"Rain Dogs proves to be a taut and exciting read. Overall, you can't ask for a better thriller than this..."   

---Thinking About Books

White-knuckle tension and crisp, clean prose distinguish this outstanding standalone from Birtcher (Angels Fall and two other Mike Travis mysteries). In 1976, Colombian and Mexican criminals are turning cocaine smuggling into a major industry, while the U.S. war on drugs is beginning to produce serious casualties. The nameless narrator is running a small-scale marijuana operation in California s Humboldt County, until bandits raid his farm and a shiftless kid rats him out. The narrator flees to a small Mexican town, where he collides with the schemes of local drug lord Miguel Zamora, who s spiraling out of control as he feeds his coke addiction and who foolishly plots to rip off both the Colombians and his partners in the government. Meanwhile, two corrupt border cops discover that they re way over their heads in their dealings with Zamora. Unable to trust anyone around them, the two must learn how far they can trust themselves. Many books call themselves thrillers, but this is the real deal. --Publishers Weekly Starred Review

THE TENTH WITNESS - LEONARD ROSEN

"This is a complex, dark, and disturbing story, beautifully told and based in part on history. Poincaré s character is deeply developed, as Rosen combines a probing Holocaust story with elements of an action thriller. A fine novel and further indication that Rosen is a writer of immense talent."--Booklist, starred review


"In Rosen's strong prequel to his 2011 debut, All Cry Chaos, Henri Poincaré, not yet an Interpol agent, uncovers a startling secret that brings back the ghosts of WWII...Rosen writes with polish and confidence."--Publishers Weekly

"This is a prequel to Rosen's acclaimed mystery debut, All Cry Chaos, which was set 30 years later when Henri was working as an Interpol investigator. Rosen relies on literary background and considerable research skillfully to portray Henri's confrontation with the nature of evil and his developing detective talents in investigating both dead Nazis and living ones. Another winner." --Library Journal

"If it's hard to wring new headlines from Nazi industrialists, Rosen uses this familiar background to tell a story as heartfelt as it is ambitious."--Kirkus Reviews

"The Tenth Witness offers a thoughtful treatise on what it is to forget, to forgive, and to take responsibility for the past. In Henri Poincaré, readers of all ages can appreciate the terrible beauty of a life lived with love for others.--ForeWord Reviews

"If every author's primary responsibility is to keep the reader turning the page while mumbling the mantra just one more chapter . . . just one more chapter then Leonard Rosen has more than accomplished this goal with The Tenth Witness...You will not be disappointed." --NY Journal of Books

"Only the very best writers can weave a compelling story from a maze of complicated ideas.... Len Rosen has proven himself to be one of them." 
--Arthur Golden, New York Times bestselling author of Memoirs of a Geisha

"The Tenth Witness is a brilliant follow up to Rosen's first thriller. Here is an author who cares as much about the pained human heart as a page-turning plot and manages to infuse this book with pathos, wit, wonder, fabulous historical detail, mystery and breathless anticipation. If you're looking for a smart thriller - look no further - Rosen is stupendous!" --International bestseller, M.J. Rose

Library Journal proclaims Leonard Rosen's The Tenth Witness "another winner."

In 1978, 28-year-old Henri Poincaré launches an engineering consulting business by salvaging a sunken treasure ship off the Dutch coast. By chance, he falls in love with Liesel Kraus, whose family’s steel he uses in his work and whose history increasingly draws him into their Nazi roots. Henri’s beloved uncle was a slave laborer for Liesel’s father and one of ten witnesses who swore he was good to Jews. To understand his uncle’s life, Henri pursues the witnesses, but they are dying and only he suspects murder. Racing to find the last one still alive and the killer who seems to be protecting the Kraus family’s reputation, Henri is forced to pit love against justice at great personal peril. VERDICT This is a prequel to Rosen’s acclaimed mystery debut, All Cry Chaos, which was set 30 years later when Henri was working as an Interpol investigator. Rosen relies on literary background and considerable research skillfully to portray Henri’s confrontation with the nature of evil and his developing detective talents in investigating both dead Nazis and living ones. Another winner.—

2013 Award Finalists

Hello Permanent Press fans, award season is upon us and we are proud announce three of our 2012 novels have qualified as finalists in three distinguished awards.

Oregon Hill - Hammett Prize Finalist

Howard Owen's first Willie Black mystery, sets the down-on-his-luck reporter apart as the only one still investigating the mysterious death of a dismembered university co-ed in the quiet town of Oregon Hill, Virginia.

The Hammett Prize is awarded by the International Association of crime writers and will be announced during the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) Fall Conference, in Somerset, New Jersey, September 30-October 2. The winner will receive a bronze trophy, designed by sculptor Peter Boiger.

Dead Anyway - Nero Award Finalist

Chris Knopf's new mystery series follows the events of Arthur Cathcart the market researcher and occasional finder of missing persons. After a close call with the wrong types of people Arthur is presumed and pronounced dead, and now he's going to find out why.

The Nero Award is presented by the Wolfe pack, a group dedicated to honoring the legendary had-boiled detective character of Nero Wolfe featured in over 30 novels written by Rex Stout. The award is given to authors whose work best represents the style of the genre originated by Stout. The award is presented at the Black Orchid Banquet, which is traditionally held on the first Saturday in December in New York City.

Racing the Devil - Shamus Award Finalist "Best First PI Novel"

Jaden Terrell's Nashville private investigator Jared McKean has a weakness for women in jeopardy - until one frames him for muder. His DNA and fingerprints are found at the murder scene and the victim was killed with a bullet from his gun. Now Jared must find a way to clear his name, hold his family together, and solve a case that could cost him his life.

The Shamus Award is presented by The Private Eye Writers of America. The Shamus Award is to honor excellent work in the Private Eye genre.The award was created by Robert J. Randisi in 1981. The winner will be announced at the PWA Banquet at Bouchercon in Albany, New York, on Friday, September 20. 

          

RainTaxi Raves Over The Inbetween People in Summer Issue Review

In the summer edition of the quarterly book review publication RainTaxi, Emma McEvoy's literary middle-eastern narrative The Inbetween People was highly praised in a two-page spread.

"Emma McEvoy’s ambitious and moving novel engages the viscerality of violence and its results, wrestles with the ethically essential imaginative task of understanding another’s human motivations and emotions, and explores the myriad in which people get lost in the land of Israel: Arab families are forced from their ancestral homes; IDF soldiers fight in “those neutral, passionless places” of the Sinai desert; conscientious objectors refused to serve past the 1967 borders wind up in prison; an Arab-Israeli IDF volunteer can’t regain his orientation; terrorist attacks disrupt daily activities; and, finally, a wife leaves her husband with only memories and cold dreams and the task of writing letter after letter...

Tragedy is a constant and McEvoy’s writing is most remarkable at capturing the sense of dumbfoundedness, communicating a stunned inability to communicate, as when one imprisoned objector speaks to his wife of “trying to be a decent human being,” and is accused of cowardice. The characters here occasionally stumble into wooden rhetoric—“there is goodness,” or “the past is the past”—but such statements heighten an emotional tautness within the novel. This underlying strain conjures precisely the tension in Israel during the last Intifada.

McEvoy has an eye, too, for specific visual and aural details of the place, the whirr of automated sprinklers, how “below you the lights of distant Galilee villages glisten like raw diamonds.” Yet is is on the emotional level that this book is most important, most brave; it insists that one must “try to imagine” the actions and experiences of others.

This is a stunning book, important not only in relation to the Israeli/Palestinian situation it addresses, but, indeed, as a wrenching work of literature explicitly concerned with the ethical functions and responsibilities of the human imagination." --RainTaxi

Look for the full review in the summer edition of RainTaxi.

The Inbetween People is available now from The Permanent Press!

The Inbetween People

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