Synopses & Reviews
Somewhere in Western New York, there's a remote mountaintop in the moonlight, its dark forests and moon-dappled meadows populated only by corpses. If ex-PI Joe Kurtz doesn't unravel the secret of that place in five days, he'll be one of them.
Everyone seems to want a piece of Kurtz these days and most succeed in getting one. Unknown assailants gun down Kurtz and his female parole officer, giving Kurtz the headache of a lifetime but putting pretty Peg O'Toole on life support. Working his own case through a haze of concussion migraine, Kurtz has to deal with Toma Gonzaga, the gay don who owes Kurtz a blood debt, and Angelina Farino Ferrara, the female don who is after Kurtz's body-or maybe just his head.
And while someone is murdering all the heroin addicts in Buffalo and hauling away the bodies, a serial killer called the Artful Dodger hatches his twisted plan.
In Kurtz's corner is police detective Rigby King, a beautiful woman who had been his young lover when they were both rebellious teenagers in Father Baker's Orphanage. Rigby also has designs on Joe Kurtz, but whether they're aimed at bedding or abetting him, helping him stay alive or simply putting him away for life, Kurtz will have to discover the hard way.
Lightning fast pace and unrelenting action are the hallmarks of this series, but the epic struggle portrayed in this book sets a new standard for crime fiction. Saturated with the ragged-edged aggression of the Buffalo streets, Dan Simmons's Hard As Nails comes down like a hammer smashing a thumb on a cold day.
Review
"Readers picking up a copy of "Hard as Nails," the latest in Simmons' Joe Kurtz series, can expect just a whole lot of action and thrills...a hard-charging, pile-driving crime-thriller that bull-dogs its way to several climaxes...a potent entertainment for those who take their drinks without the little umbrellas."-Denver Post
"There's hard-boiled detective fiction and then there are the Joe Kurtz thrillers from Dan Simmons. The Kurtz books make the majority of noir novels read like tea cozy mysteries...[The] Kurtz novels are some of the best thrillers you'll find...HARD AS NAILS is hard to beat." -Rocky Mountain News
"No one changes lanes from SF to horror to crime fiction more dexterously than the prolific, protean Simmons, who...seldom provides less than a page-turner." -Kirkus Reviews
"PI Joe Kurtz is back in the wringer, and the versatile Simmons cranks it for all its worth...A nice, dark, all-purpose thriller with some of the appeal of Mike Hammer, Parker or Burke, and all the fun of Mac Bolan, Executioner."-Booklist
"The suspense is irresistible."-The Charlotte Observer
"Another great performance in [Simmons's] series featuring Joe Kurtz...lots of explosive action, including an exceptionally cinematic, pulse-pounding conclusion." -State Journal
Synopsis
An abandoned amusements park's rides are filled with corpses, and ex-PI Joe Kurtz must solve the case before he's killed, on top of dealing with the mafia, a serial killer, and the attentions of a female police detective.
Synopsis
Somewhere in Western New York, there's an abandoned amusement park, its overgrown rides filled only with corpses. If ex-PI Joe Kurtz doesn't unravel the secret of this place in five days, he'll be one of them.
Synopsis
"There's hard-boiled detective fiction and then there are the Joe Kurtz thrillers from Dan Simmons...Hard As Nails is hard to beat." -Rocky Mountain NewsIf You're Going To Shoot Joe Kurtz...
Ex-PI Joe Kurtz's survival is on the line when an ambush leaves him badly wounded and his parole officer Peg O'Toole barely clinging to life. Their respective professions have ensured that neither suffers from a shortage of enemies so discovering which of them was the intended target isn't easy. But Kurtz knows who's at the head of his list: Angelina Farino Ferrara, the lethal beauty who leads the Farino crime family, as well as her mob rival, ice cold Toma Gonzaga, who has his own dark history with Kurtz.
You'd Better Shoot To Kill.
The odd thing is, each wants to hire Joe Kurtz to find out who's been waging war beneath the cold gray skies of western New York. Until now, the casualties have been heroin junkies and their dealers. But now, the shootings of Kurtz and O'Toole have drawn the notice of both the newspapers and Buffalo PD Detective Rigby King, who shared Kurtz's tough childhood in a Buffalo orphanage, and who wants to put Kurtz back in prison-or back in her bed. Even Kurtz's jaded past cannot prepare him for what he's about to learn as he finds himself caught in an ever-tightening vise between the wounded and warring mob families and the cops, unaware that a maniac is waiting for his chance to strike...
"The appeal of Mike Hammer, Parker or Burke." -Booklist
About the Author
Since his first published short story won the Rod Serling Memorial Award in the 1982 Twilight Zone Magazine Short Fiction contest,
Dan Simmons has won some of the top awards in science fiction, horror, fantasy, and thriller genres, as well as honors for his mainstream fiction. His books include the Joe Kurtz novels
Hardcase and
Hard Freeze as well as the science fiction epic
Ilium. He lives along the Front Range of Colorado, where he is currently at work on a new Joe Kurtz novel.