The Kind One

In 1930's Los Angeles, someone desperately wants to know who Danny Landon is. That someone is Danny Landon himself. All the young man really knows about himself is that some terrible incident has erased his memory. Danny's boss is a mobster named Bud Seitz — a vicious, sadistic killer who's been given the ironic nickname of "The Kind One." According to Seitz, Danny's amnesia is the result of being hit in the head with a lead pipe. But Danny's not sure of anything. How can he be a gangster when he doesn't feel like one? It's not easy being the right-hand man to a big criminal, and it gets harder when Danny's ordered to keep an eye on Bud's lovely young girlfriend, Darla. Danny can't help but fall in love with her.

To make matters worse, Danny's life at his bungalow-court apartment is no picnic as he's constantly having to rescue his 11-year-old neighbor Sophie from an abusive home life. It seems that only the kindly Dulwich, a lonely neighbor with his own mysterious history, can bring Danny any peace, offering him tea and sympathy at the end of a hard day. As Danny maneuvers through the corrupt, sun-drenched city, he uncovers terrible secrets and finds himself on a mission to liberate those he cares about.

Only by following this gripping noir thriller to its violent, shocking climax will the reader discover who Danny really is and if he has it in him to save his friends — and himself.

"Screenwriter Epperson (coauthor of the script for One False Move) makes an effortless transition to novel writing with this hard-biting noir set in 1930s Los Angeles. While the contours of the plot will strike many as familiar, the author avoids clichés in his tale of Danny Landon, who works for vicious mobster Bub Seitz (aka 'the Kind One'). Danny, who suffers from amnesia, only dimly recalls the events that led to his receiving the epithet 'Two Gun Danny,' but finds the accounts he's been given of his violent past at odds with his current revulsion for bloodshed. When Seitz, a mercurial figure with a hair-trigger temper, asks Landon to keep an eye on his current squeeze, Darla, the two men soon find themselves in conflict. With spare prose, Epperson presents Landon's inner turmoil plausibly and manages to throw in an occasional turn of phrase that Raymond Chandler might have penned. While this book lacks the depth of James Ellroy's L.A. noir novels, it's an impressive debut and deserves to be followed by more." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Tom Epperson brings fresh sensibility and a familiar yet uniquely poetic voice to a heart-stopping story of 1930's L.A. gangsters. Echoes of Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy....What's not to love?" Andy Straka, Shamus Award-winning author

"[A] summary of the plot risks sounding more like a sneering parody of the genre than a rendering of an actual story. And yet it is also much more." Los Angeles Times

Tom Epperson headed west from Arkansas with his boyhood friend Billy Bob Thornton to pursue a career in show business. He's co-written the screenplays for One False Move, A Family Thing, The Gift, and A Gun, a Car, a Blonde. He lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife, Stefani, and three pampered cats.