Kinney Fahey has been on the job for six months. He’s not focusing his efforts on the paperwork and it’s gonna bite him…real bad. ROAD GIG is a tight, well-written 19,000 word novella by a great new voice in crime fiction.

A short story called BLOOD EVIDENCE, which is a Barefield story, along with an afterword by Trey is included.

As a final bonus, sample chapters from THE DEVIL AND THE DIVA by David Housewright and Renee Valois, BLACKHEART HIGHWAY (the 4th Wil Hardesty mystery) by Richard Barre and CZECHMATE: THE SPY WHO PLAYED JAZZ by Bill Moody are included.

BE A CHARACTER CONTEST

Have you ever wanted to be a character in a book? How about a Trey R. Barker book? Now’s your chance. Between now and May 31, 2012 when you purchase a copy of ROAD GIG, you can receive an entry to the contest. Read the book and find the code word can get you another entry. Post a review on Amazon or B&N and you get two more entries. That’s four chances in total! Three lucky winners will be randomly chosen by Trey. Want more details, buy ROAD GIG today!

Available for:  KINDLE | NOOK

Blackheart Highway
By Richard Barre

With The Innocents, Bearing Secrets and The Ghosts of Morning, Richard Barre has emerged as “one of the best hard-boiled detective novelists of the ‘90s” (San Francisco Chronicle Book Review). Now, with Blackheart Highway, he takes the genre for the ride of its life.

Southern California P.I. Wil Hardesty is a man whose search for the truth always seems to draw him back into his own troubled past, a past shadowed by loss. Doc Whitney was a country music star whose career had just gone platinum when he was convicted for the brutal slayings of his wife and young daughters.

Now twenty years later, their paths collide when Doc is paroled from prison and returns to California’s hot, dusty Central Valley…where grudges die hard and the road leads to places best left unexplored.

In a town divided over Doc’s release, two people with very different agendas recruit Wil. Once wants the elusive Doc gone permanently. The other is convinced he’s innocent and wants him cleared.

Through a maze of secrets and lies that threaten crash-and-burn with each passing moment, through switchback of twisted loyalties and grim betrayal, Wil must reconstruct a life, discover the real Doc Whitney, track down a killer. And, of course, survive…

REVIEWS:

“Shamus-winner Barre evokes the ever-present past as a melancholy backdrop against which Hardesty works his lone-wolf magic. An excellent series.” —Booklist

“Wil Hardesty is a private eye whose destination may just be the pantheon of great ones who followed tough clues before him.” –Michael Connelly

“Haunting, compelling and beautifully written. Richard Barre touches the soul. He is simply one of the best.” —Harlan Coben

“Barre swings for the fences once more with this sprawling, convoluted blast from the past” —Kirkus Reviews

“Explodes into our senses in a perfect balance of action, suspense and emotion. The sheer beauty and strength of Barre’s writing gives Blackheart Highway a glow of redemption that’s extremely rare in any kind of fiction.” —Chicago Tribune

“The legitimate heir to Ross Macdonald…the dark poet king of California mysteries.” —Chicago Tribune

“Creating an enigmatic, taciturn character that has enough dimensions to cast a shadow over a novel is no easy task. Barre handles that admirably. Makes you wish the book had been packaged with a soundtrack CD.” —Los Angeles Times

“Barre’s plot is complexly woven…the tensions and layered plot…will keep you reading and guessing.” —Santa Barbara News Press

“Reading like a country song, Blackheart Highway is a story of tragedy and redemption…an insightful, moving read.” —Romantic Times

“Hang on tight—Barre keeps the pedal to the metal all the way. This one’s a winner. Save yourself a second trip to the bookstore and pick up the other books in the excellent Wil Hardesty series now.” —Jan Burke, author of Disturbance

“Spare, economical tight writing. This is an outstanding novel without a wasted word. Plots and subplots intertwine with spiraling tension to a very high level. This one is a grabber you’ll want to read in a single setting.” —The Mystery Zone

“Not a wasted word. Blackheart Highway is a stunning accomplishment.” —Ed’s Internet Book Review

BUY IT TODAY:

KINDLE | NOOK

The newest book from Bill Moody is now available for purchase as a Trade Paperback and all eBook formats. Following is a brief synopsis:

The year is 1968. The liberal reforms of Czechoslovakia’s new leader, Alexander Dubcek, have outraged the Kremlin and now, 250,000 Warsaw Pact forces are amassed on the borders.

For American intelligence, the situation is worsened when their prime source, Josef Blaha, threatens to cut them off unless one demand is met: a totally safe contact. For CIA veteran, Alan Curtis, jazz musician Gene Williams seems the ideal choice. His invitation to the Prague Jazz festival gives him perfect cover and access to Prague.

But Williams is a musician, not a spy and has other ideas that force Curtis to resort to blackmail to get the young musician to accept what Curtis calls a simple pickup and delivery. It starts to go wrong when Williams finds Blaha murdered by the KGB and he’s left to unravel the puzzle on his own. What he finds is even more than Curtis bargained for. With the help of Blaha’s beautiful granddaughter Lena, Williams races against time to warn Dubcek of the impending invasion and uncover a traitor in the US Embassy.

Mary Stanton, author and editor, says “Bill Moody’s atmospheric, jazz-driven novels featuring Evan Horne are right next to Michael Connelly and Don Winslow on my bookshelf. With CZECHMATE, he moves into John LeCarre territory. Like TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY, Moody brilliantly explores the dark world of 60’s Cold War Europe. And, like Le Carre, Moody himself has been there.”

Here is a PDF of the first three chapters so you can give it a spin.

If you like it, you can order it from your favorite Independent bookstore or on-line.
CreateSpace TP | Amazon TP | Kindle | Nook (forthcoming)

As many of you know, I was a big fan of Milton’s work. I am proud to say Down & Out Books published his short story collection called Texas Noir. Crimespree Magazine #46 includes a piece written by Scott Montgomery about Milton. It is ‘mighty fine’.

The following is a list of his books and where you may purchase them if so inclined.

1947. An enigmatic man driving a fine Lincoln convertible and accompanied by a beautiful blonde, comes to a small West Texas town. Ostensibly, his purpose is to get into a poker game that had been going at the infamous Weilbach Hotel. But as the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that he has a darker motive, one that centers on a sinister local banker named Clifton Robillard. Aided by an old-time hood named Chicken Little, the protagonist maneuvers Robillard toward a shattering climax in which we discover that nothing is what it seems to be.
With its wildcatting spirit, The Rogues’ Game is a high stakes novel and an exquisite quest for revenge.

Amazon – HC

Barnes & Noble – HC

Not currently available as an eBook.

Distilled in Texas and the Delta, a straight-no-chaser crime novel set around the legendary Dixie Mafia.

Manfred Eugene “Hog” Webern, a retired Dallas County deputy sheriff, is talked into going undercover in Biloxi, Mississippi, in a multistate effort to nail a group of traveling Southern criminals who have been tagged by the press with the lurid name “Dixie Mafia.” After making contact with the gang’s nominal leader, the notorious Jasper Sparks, Webern begins to worm his way into the group’s confidence. He also meets and becomes involved with an old friend of Sparks, the mysterious Nell Bigelow, a former assistant federal prosecutor whose daddy “owns half the Delta.”

Having gained the gang’s trust, Webern soon learns that the score being planned is the massive robbery of a wintering carnival of an entire year’s receipts. Joining in planning the job, he meets such well-known hijackers as Slops Moline, a Charleston, South Carolina, killer and armed robber; Lardass Collins, the country’s premier car thief; Tom-Tom Reed, one of the world’s most skilled safecrackers; and the infamous Raymond “Hardhead” Weller, an Alabama-born moonshiner who has pulled off more than two dozen high-profile contract killings in his seventy years.

As the story develops, Webern is drawn into a maelstrom of robbery, mayhem, and senseless violence that threatens to engulf his very being. And before the final curtain falls on The Sweet and the Dead, we learn that in the murky world of Southern professional crime, nothing is ever quite what it seems to be.

Amazon – HC

Kindle

Nook

Small town, meet big crime.

It’s not hard for longtime Sheriff Bo Handel to keep Texas’ Caddo County in line. He handles petty crimes and rabble rousers, runs a competent police force and maintains a relationship with his steady girlfriend while keeping things quiet.

But when the local minister’s wife, Amanda Twiller, is murdered and dumped on the church’s front, Bo suddenly finds himself with his hands full. Unfortunately for Bo, finding Amanda’s killer won’t be as easy as rounding up the town’s usual suspects. He’ll have to get past sleazy attorneys and drug lords first. When he discovers that Amanda was not only addicted to narcotics but also having an affair with one of the roughest men in town, the lazy days of his past are a distant memory.

Soon, Bo realizes there are only so many cocaine kings and Mob bosses that one man can juggle. But the murderer is out there, and it’s up to Bo to find out who it is. This small town sheriff is used to a light workload. So what happens when heavy crime comes to town?

Amazon – HC

Kindle

Barnes & Noble HC

Nook

A rip-roaring mystery set in 1940s Texas, featuring a Texas Ranger and the New Orleans Mafia.

December, 1942. Texas Ranger Virgil Tucker receives a plea for protection from Madeline Kimbell, a terrified young woman who witnessed a crime. Keeping Madeline safe from the men who want to hurt her turns out to be harder than he imagined. When a prominent attorney is murdered, Virgil is drawn into the dangerous world of the New Orleans Mafia as the top mob bosses try to take over alveston’s gambling empire. Chockfull of Southern charm, this book is perfect for fans of historical mysteries and for anyone who loves Texas.

Amazon – HC

Kindle

Barnes & Noble – HC

Nook

Milton T. Burton, acclaimed author of The Rogue’s Game, The Sweet and the Dead and most recently Nights of the Red Moon, has pulled together 17 short stories in a collection called Texas Noir. He starts with a hay baler in A Good Beginning, we’re introduced to Sam MacCord in a couple of stories and Bo Handel makes an appearance. Milton tries his hand at, of all things, a vampire tale and nails it. Wild Bill Throckett gets hanged, not once but three times! He ends this round with a simple e-mail exchange between a hit man and his lover’s husband.

Kindle

Nook

The Devil and the Diva by David Housewright and Renée Valois is Down & Out Books first print edition. It is now available for purchase at createspace. The trade paperback will soon be available from independent bookstores as well as Amazon.

On March 20, 2012 Down & Out Books will release Scoundrels: Tales of Greed, Murder and Financial Crimes. It’s an all-original anthology edited by Chester Himes award winner Gary Phillips.

The anthology includes fourteen new tales from SJ Rozan, David Corbett, Reed Farrel Coleman, Brendan DuBois, Kelli Stanley, Tyler Dilts, Travis Richardson, Eric Stone, Bob Truluck, Pamela Samuels Young, Darrell James, Lono Waiwaiole, Seth Harwood and Gary Phillips.

In this arresting anthology you’ll read stories of gabbing grifters, brokers hedging big bets for the big take, schemers working the long con for the sure money, used car salesman with golden dreams and dashed hopes, bent lawyers and their more bent clients, one percenters hustling for that last half-percent, kind-hearted killers and the lonely hearted who tell themselves any lie as they double down for the long count.

Scoundrels: Tales of Greed, Murder and Financial Crime will be available across all eBook platforms including Kindle and Nook as well as a trade paperback edition.

Keep checking back…you may find a free story or video.

Mystery addict and Anthony Award winning Crimespree Magazine editor Jon Jordan interviews 25 authors in the mystery genre. This is a great peek into the minds of some of the biggest names in mysteries (and some you may not have heard of, but should have).

Interviewee’s are: Colin Bateman, Loren D. Estleman, Warren Murphy, Mark Billingham, Steve Hamilton, George Pelecanos, Cara Black, Charlaine Harris, Manuel Ramos, Stephen Booth, Vicki Hendricks, Ian Rankin, Max Allan Collins, Laura Lippman, Peter Robinson, John Connolly, Lise McClendon, SJ Rozan, Jeffery Deaver, Val McDermid, Barbara Seranella, Sean Doolittle, Katy Munger, Charles Todd and Brian Wiprud.

Includes sample chapters from Richard Barre’s THE GHOSTS OF MORNING, Terry Holland’s CHICAGO SHIVER and Trey R. Barker’s 2,000 MILES TO OPEN ROAD.

Praise:
“There’s something for every sub-genre fan along with a compelling opportunity for the reader to discover a new writer, or different sub-genre, that’s likely to appeal…And he concludes each interview by asking each author what’s in his refrigerator. The most lively answer – Ian Rankin’s “$200,000 worth of cocaine and a 9mm Beretta.”"
—Terry D’Aurary

KINDLE | NOOK

Buddy Kai and Dominic Rosario are enterprising native Hawaiian businessmen–competitors, actually–preparing to fight for control of the methamphetamine trade on the Big Island of Hawaii, where the population is small in relation to Oahu with it megapolis of Honolulu, but where the appetite for “ice”–as crystal meth is known in the local parlance–seems to both of them to be almost insatiable. When Buddy is approached by an L.A.-based Mexican cartel to be their “main man” on the Big Island, and becomes convinced that he and his particular cohorts and minions can go up against and “defeat” the entrenched Japanese organization, which has controlled all vice in the Islands, including the meth trade, since time immemorial, and which certainly has no intention of sharing, let alone being forced out, of such a lucrative criminal enterprise, the stage is set for Dark Paradise, Lono Waiwaiole’s brilliant “Red Harvest in miniature:” A noir novel-com-sociological study that truly “tells it like it is,” showing the society that has resulted from the policies of “internal colonialism” that have been practiced by the federal government of the United States, starting with the Calvinist missionaries of European descent and continuing through the last 125 years, with successive waves of imported foreign “labor”–Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, South Sea Islander–always with the native Hawaiians relegated to the bottom rung of the economic totem pole, where the only “outs”–just like in the mainland ghettos–are sports, entertainment, or drug-dealing. Maybe the situation will change some day, if enough people read and understand novels like Dark Paradise…

PRAISE:

Bill Ott of Booklist gave this one a *Starred Review*. “Waiwaiole’s Wiley series, starring a Portland, Oregon, poker player and part-time detective, is nothing if not dark, but in this stand-alone thriller set on Hawaii’s Big Island, the author pulls the blackout curtains all the way down. Cop novels are rarely true noir, but this is no ordinary cop novel. Geronimo “Gee” Souza is a cop, yes, but the way his life is falling down around his ankles (wife problems, girlfriend problems, gambling problems), he seems more like the doomed hero in a David Goodis novel. And that’s before he gets caught in the middle of a meth war between native islanders (all childhood pals), Mexicans representing a cartel, and the Japanese Mob. Meanwhile, an old-beyond-her-years teenager is plotting revenge against her seriously abusive father, until she, too, becomes a pawn in the drug war (or so it seems at first). Waiwaiole has an Elmore Leonard–touch with his lowlifes, injecting plenty of pop culture and humanizing quirks, but these guys never seem unrealistically lovable the way Leonard’s rogues sometimes do. They’re more like the cut-to-the-bone characters in a Daniel Woodrell novel, or even early Pelecanos—say, King Suckerman—loose cannons careening about a confined space: it’s big, but it’s still an island, and in the end, there’s no place to run. Noir fans need to know about Waiwaiole right now. He’s the real thing, and he’s too good to miss.”

“…Violent and profane, this noir exercise draws a devastating picture of drug-induced carnage…”
–Publisher’s Weekly

KINDLE | NOOK

You will enjoy this ride!

In his Shamus Award winning first novel, The Innocents, Richard Barre introduced audiences to Wil Hardesty, “a person trying hard to survive a few of life’s dirtier tricks” (Cleveland Plain Dealer). He’s a private eye with a deep, dark past–and an uncertain future. In The Ghosts of Morning, Barre plunges even further into Wil’s history, to a far-off place where murder and friendship collide.

Denny Van Zant was Wil Hardesty’s best friend. Together they surfed, drank and brawled their youth away. Then came the day Denny was accused of murder. Some said he did it. Some said he didn’t. He was never quite charged. Then came Vietnam, and years later Wil saw what had been identified as his best friend buried at a military funeral.

Now, decades later, Wil receives a phone call from Denny’s mother, a voice from yesterday that brings painful memories flooding back. She thinks Denny is still alive. Her evidence is sketchy, but it is a place to start. And once started, Wil won’t be able to stop until he’s sure Denny is alive. Or both of them are dead.

PRAISE

“Barre has tapped into the psyche of a generation; The Ghosts of Morning is a ride as wild and exhilarating as the California surf. History, nostalgia and gritty human realities hooked me so deeply into the world of Wil Hardesty…the plot grabs, the character seduce, and the pace never lets up.”
–Nevada Barr

“Wil Hardesty is a new private eye whose destination may just be the pantheon of great ones who followed tough clues before him.”
–Michael Connelly

“Barre’s language strikes eloquent chords of pain and regret…a steamy, evocative stew…”
–Publisher’s Weekly

“…one of the best hard-boiled detective novelists of the 90′s.”
–The San Francisco Chronicle

You can find it here:
KINDLE | NOOK

With a murder indictment hanging over his head, an angry cop on his tail, and an unknown woman who just dove through his car window during a shootout at the Carson City sewage plant, Halford Turnbull has just one goal:

To prove his innocence. Not to the prosecutors, not to the cops. To his brother. But brother Hanford is halfway across the country and between Carson City, Nevada and Huntsville, Texas is a pile of trouble that Hal simply can’t seem to avoid.

From stealing $20,000 to buy a DVD of a murder, to a low-rent casino in Vegas where a sadistic security guard is killed and a church filled with self-flagellant priests in Valentine, Texas, where a second shoot-out leaves a riot of bodies, Hal simply can’t catch a break.

And during it all, Hal wavers. He wants to prove to his brother-the good brother-that he isn’t a killer. But as situations begin to pile up, Hal thinks less of his brother than his girlfriend and a safe, new life in Mexico.

In a drive-in movie parking lot, he and his girlfriend and brother finally are forced to face both Hal’s haunting demons and the man who created the DVD of murder, and who wants his property back.

It is a 2,000 mile journey that could lead to redemption and could just get him killed, and yet there is no way Hal Turnbull can avoid driving those miles.

This is the start of the Barefiled series.

Kindle | Nook