Penzler Pick, July 2001: Dan Simmons is not an author who writes the same book twice. He doesn't even come close. Since switching from fantasy/horror to mystery, Simmons has written Crook Factory, set in Cuba and starring Ernest Hemingway, and Darwin's Blade, featuring a genius insurance claims investigator who only has to look at a demolished vehicle to be able to know exactly what led up to the crash.

With Hardcase, Simmons both pays homage to over-the-top pulp fiction and writes a remarkably good example of it. Joe Kurtz has no intention of giving up his chosen profession of private investigator, even though he's just spent 12 years in jail. He believes it's only a matter of finding the right case. But that case will never come to him, so he pays a call on Byron Tatick Farino, mob boss, and suggests that for $400 a day plus expenses, he'll try to find the Family's missing accountant and also figure out who's hijacking the Family's trucks. Farino is inclined to let him do this since he has nothing to lose, and Joe did save his son from a fate worse than death in Cell Block D.

So Joe is off and running, and after picking up his ex-assistant, Arlene, he opens an office in the basement of a porn store and begins looking into the Mob's business. He no sooner interviews the accountant's wife than she is found dead and horribly mutilated.

The list of those who want Joe to butt out is long, and they are evidently very serious about preventing Joe from finding out too much. There's the person who is hijacking the trucks, and wants to continue. There's also a couple of sociopaths (if not psychopaths) named Malcolm and Cutter who work for the Mob's lawyer. Unsurprisingly, they are not exactly loyal and know that there's a $10,000 reward for the guy who wasted Ali, one of the Death Mosque brothers in Cell Block D. Finally, there are the Levine brothers, Manny and Sammy. Joe hasn't heard of either of them, but word is that Manny blames Joe for Sammy's death.

These numerous and varied storylines remain remarkably lucid as Simmons treats us to a fast-paced thriller with excitement on every page. --Otto Penzler


From Publishers Weekly
In books such as Darwin's Blade, Carrion Comfort and Hyperion, Simmons has shown a chameleon talent for mastering the colors and shadings of the horror, suspense and science-fiction genres. He adds one more tone to his palette with this terse hardboiled crime thriller, set in an upstate New York town bathed in Conradian darkness. When ex-PI Joe Kurtz emerges from Attica after an 11-year-stretch, he is still being sought by the brother of a man he iced for murdering his partner, as well as by disciples of a Black Muslim group whose leader he killed in stir. Not the most obedient parolee, Joe clandestinely resumes detective work, tracing a vanished mob accountant for aging don Byron Farino much to the aggravation of the don's family and associates, who are secretly double-crossing one another and jockeying for power. Simmons sets up the paths of crossfire necessary for the story's few surprising twists, then simply lets the bodies start falling once the bullets start flying. His narrative is all sinew and bloody gristle, stripped of the deep reflection and lively character-development that usually give his books a plusher texture. His plot depends on coincidence, exploitation of the raging Niagara Falls backdrop and Joe's superhuman capacity for taking and dishing out physical abuse, but his rapid pacing keeps the reader from dwelling too much on its improbability. This tale is unlikely to advance modern crime-fiction's literary ambitions, but it will be hard to beat for a pulp-fiction beach-read. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Ex-P.I. Joe Kurtz has just finished a jail term for throwing a bad guy out of a window onto the top of a police car. After his release, he accepts an assignment from a semi-retired Don to search for a missing Mafia accountant. In the course of the quest, Kurtz faces mafiosi, a sadistic druglord, hired killers, gangbangers, a family of retarded Aryan Brotherhood rejects, and a crooked cop, who come with names like Doorag, Cutter, Malcolm Kibunte, and the Dane. Before it's over, the tainted hero has maimed two thugs and killed nine others and committed three acts of arson. There's no letdown from explosive start to hell-for-leather finish in this hard-as-nails detective story. Comparison with Richard Stark's amoral badguy Parker or Andrew Vachss's Burke are inevitable, but Kurtz is more Parker than Burke: there is no sentimentality or excess prose here, just unceasing action with a ragged edge. Simmons (Darwin's Blade, The Crook Factory) has crafted an exceptional tale of nonstop violence and double cross. Watch out, bad guys! Kurtz is here! Enthusiastically recommended. David Keymer, California State Univ., Stanislaus Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Review
"The toughest, darkest 'hero' in crime fiction since Parker."--Denver Post

"A hardcore full-tilt rocket ride."--Rocky Mountain News

"A cinematic story."--Chicago Tribune



Book Description
Award-winning author Dan Simmons expertly reveals more surprises than clowns in a circus car as he takes the reader on a trip with Kurtz through the cold, windy streets of Buffalo where one wrong move could mean a belly-full of lead...

Joe Kurtz has been wronged one too many times. So when he takes out the drug dealing thug that killed his girlfried, the ex-PI gets to cool his heels for 11 years in Attica. It's there that he meets "Little Skag" Farino, the son of an aging Buffalo, New York mob boss. In exchange for protecting the kid's manhood against any unwanted jailhouse affection, Kurtz gets an audience with Little Skag's father upon his release from prison.

Byron Farino is still clinging to what dwindling power he holds on the New York organized crime scene. He enlists Kurtz's help to track down the Family's missing accountant--a man with too much knowledge of Family business to have on the loose. But someone doesn't want the accountant found. As the story twists and turns and the body count rises, Kurtz no longer knows who he can trust. Everyone seems to be after something, from the mob boss's sultry yet dangerous daughter, to a hit man named The Dane, an albino killer who is good with a knife, and a dwarf who is armed to the teeth and hell-bent on revenge.



About the Author
In his twenty years of publication, DAN SIMMONS has won more than 50 major American and international awards for his fiction. Currently working on a new novel and screenplay, Mr. Simmons lives in Colorado.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Dan Simmons is a supremely versatile novelist who is equally at home writing horror (Carrion Comfort), suspense (Darwin's Blade), and far-future science fiction (Hyperion). His latest novel, Hardcase, is a thriller in the hard-edged tradition of Donald E. Westlake's alter ego, Richard Stark, and it's as lean, mean, and tightly constructed as anything I've encountered in a very long time.

The hardcase of the title is Buffalo-based PI Joe Kurtz. (And yes, the echo of Conrad's Heart of Darkness is deliberate.) Simmons sets the tone in the opening chapter when Kurtz, in response to an as yet unspecified provocation, tortures a hoodlum named Eddie Falco, then throws his mutilated body from a sixth-story window. Kurtz, who makes Richard Stark's Parker look like a good-natured seminarian, spends the next 11 years in Attica, where he hones his survival skills to a preternatural degree.

Hardcase tells the story of Kurtz'z reemergence into the Darwinian society of the Buffalo underworld, where a clandestine power struggle between criminal rivals is in full swing. What follows is an over-the-top tale of greed, corruption, vengeance, and betrayal, told in a spare, deceptively simple style. As the newly paroled Kurtz attempts to reconstruct his life, he finds himself embroiled in a multi-layered web of violence and deceit that involves a vivid gallery of Buffalo lowlifes, including: an aging Mafioso and his Machiavellian daughter, a comically inept family of Southern white supremacists, a crooked Mafia lawyer, an array of local gangbangers, and a sadistic albino hit man named, appropriately, Cutter.

The result is a high adrenaline narrative that ends in a spectacularly bloody climax -- a climax which, as Kurtz himself notes, leaves the stage as littered with bodies as the final act of Hamlet. Hardcase isn't by any means Simmons's best or most ambitious novel, but it's a witty, hard-boiled jeu d'esprit by a first-rate storyteller and a master of the unexpected. It might turn out to be the beach book of the year. (Bill Sheehan)

Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub, At the Foot of the Story Tree, has been published by Subterranean Press (www.subterraneanpress.com).

ANNOTATION

Bestselling author Dan Simmons expertly builds the tension as he springs one surprise after another, all the while daring the reader to take a ride with Kurtz through the cold, windy streets of Buffalo where one wrong move could mean a belly-full of lead.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Joe Kurtz has been wronged one too many times. So when he takes out the drug-dealing thug who killed his girl-friend, the ex-P. I. gets to cool his heels for eleven years in Attica. While there he meets "Little Skag" Farino, the son of an aging Buffalo, New York, mob boss. In exchange for protecting the kid's manhood against any unwanted jailhouse affection, Kurtz gets an audience with Little Skag's father upon his release from prison." "Semiretired Don Byron Farino is still clinging to what dwindling power he holds on the New York organized-crime scene. He enlists Kurtz's help to track down the Family's missing accountant - a man with too much knowledge of Family business to have on the loose. But someone doesn't want the accountant found. As the story twists and turns, and the body count rises, Kurtz no longer knows whom he can trust. Everyone seems to be after something, from the mob boss's sultry yet dangerous daughter, to a hit man named the Dane, an albino killer who is good with a knife, and a dwarf who is armed to the teeth and hell-bent on revenge."--BOOK JACKET.

SYNOPSIS

Joe Kurtz has been wronged one too many times. So when he takes out the drug-dealing thug who killed his girlfriend, the ex-PI gets to cool his heels for 11 years in Attica. It's there that he meets "Little Skag" Farino, the son of an aging Buffalo, New York, mob boss. In exchange for protecting the kid's manhood against any unwanted jailhouse affection, Kurtz gets an audience with Little Skag's father upon his release from prison.

Semi-retired Don Byron Farino is still clinging to what dwindling power he holds on the New York organized crime scene. He enlists Kurtz's help to track down the Family's missing accountant￯﾿ﾽa man with too much knowledge of Family business to have on the loose. But someone doesn't want the accountant found. As the story twists and turns and the body count rises, Kurtz no longer knows whom he can trust. Everyone seems to be after something, from the mob boss's sultry yet dangerous daughter, to a hit man named The Dane, an albino killer who is good with a knife, and a dwarf who is armed to the teeth and hell-bent on revenge.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Ex-P.I. Joe Kurtz has just finished a jail term for throwing a bad guy out of a window onto the top of a police car. After his release, he accepts an assignment from a semi-retired Don to search for a missing Mafia accountant. In the course of the quest, Kurtz faces mafiosi, a sadistic druglord, hired killers, gangbangers, a family of retarded Aryan Brotherhood rejects, and a crooked cop, who come with names like Doorag, Cutter, Malcolm Kibunte, and the Dane. Before it's over, the tainted hero has maimed two thugs and killed nine others and committed three acts of arson. There's no letdown from explosive start to hell-for-leather finish in this hard-as-nails detective story. Comparison with Richard Stark's amoral badguy Parker or Andrew Vachss's Burke are inevitable, but Kurtz is more Parker than Burke: there is no sentimentality or excess prose here, just unceasing action with a ragged edge. Simmons (Darwin's Blade, The Crook Factory) has crafted an exceptional tale of nonstop violence and double cross. Watch out, bad guys! Kurtz is here! Enthusiastically recommended. David Keymer, California State Univ., Stanislaus Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews