Across nearly a dozen internationally-acclaimed and awards-nominated novels, the Hector Lassiter series has beguiled readers with a secret history of 20th Century crime, politics and the arts. Hector—wanderer, lover and a fiction author frequently described by literary critics as “living what he writes and writing what he lives”—has served as witness and even catalyst to some of his turbulent age’s darkest historic and artistic moments. In this last, life-spanning book, Craig McDonald further informs and fits the capstone on the Lassiter saga. Noted acquaintances and “characters” from the previous novels also take their final bows, including Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles, for a last, seductive historical romp through the 20th Century and beyond, spanning romantic Ragtime America to our increasingly treacherous digital age. Write from Wrong presents a poignant and provocative portrait of the author not just as a young but also as an old man, yet one always striving to lay down “one true sentence.” This is the last installment of McDonald’s Edgar/Anthony-awards nominated series, but also stands as an entry point for new readers to experience a crime series BookPage declared “wildly inventive” and The Chicago Tribune the “most unusual, and readable crime fiction to come along in years.”
Across nearly a dozen internationally-acclaimed and awards-nominated novels, the Hector Lassiter series has beguiled readers with a secret history of 20th Century crime, politics…
In 2007, the Hector Lassiter series launched with "Head Games", a literary thriller set along the borderlands of 1957 America-a road novel that met with ecstatic reviews and international awards attention, including Edgar and Anthony nominations for Best First Novel by an American Author.
With "Three Chords & The Truth", Craig McDonald at last sets the capstone on the Hector Lassiter series and legend.
Winter, 1958: Nashville, Tennessee is locked in an icy snow storm doing nothing to cool racial tensions in Music City, USA, or points farther south.
Following a midair collision, a U.S. military crew has been forced to dump a hydrogen bomb off the coast of South Carolina-a deadly device still there today, a weapon of mass destruction whose nuclear trigger may be rusting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, potentially still threatening the east coast well into the 21st Century.
Once again, forgotten history and historical figures are reanimated and given new life and relevance through the Hector Lassiter series-nothing less than a literary secret history of 20th Century America. In an up-from-the-heels voice that recalls his first-person narration of "Head Games", Hector once again tells his own remarkable story, one that rounds out the saga BookPage has called "wildly inventive" and The Chicago Tribune calls "the most unusual, and readable crime fiction to come along in years."
This is a vintage Lassiter novel, at last revealing the ultimate fate of the author-screenwriter famous for living what he wrote and writing about what he lived.
"[The Lassiter novels] are compelling, thrilling and darkly humorous. Lassiter is a brilliant creation- a crime writer who learned his trade with Ernest Hemingway and the Lost Generation in Paris in the 1920s. He is also a man who seems dangerously prone to violent intrigue, doomed love affairs, tragic marriages and military campaigns (he's a veteran of the Punitive Expedition, World War One, the Spanish Civil War and World War Two). Lassiter witnesses history unfolding and, occasionally, has a role in shaping it course. With "Three Chords and the Truth", Craig McDonald has crafted a remarkable coda to the series." -Steve Powell, The Venetian Vase
"With each of his Hector Lassiter novels, Craig McDonald has stretched his canvas wider and unfurled tales of increasingly greater resonance." -Megan Abbott
"Reading a Hector Lassiter novel is like having a great uncle pull you aside, pour you a tumbler of rye, and tell you a story about how the 20th century 'really' went down." -Duane Swierczynski
In 2007, the Hector Lassiter series launched with "Head Games", a literary thriller set along the borderlands of 1957 America-a road novel that met with ecstatic reviews and…
Ian Fleming and Hector Lassiter: Novelists, ex-spies and, at last, lions in winter.
It's 1963, and the future isn't what it used to be. Lassiter senses the culture is slowly but surely shouldering him aside. Yet his friend Ian stands on the verge of unimaginable success as his long-running series of James Bond novels at last makes its way to the Silver Screen.
A dying man, Ian finds it harder to live the high-life necessary to feed his 007 page-turners, but the ex-spymaster pines for a last grand adventure. As Hector follows Ian on a research trip to Japan for his next Bond novel, You Only Live Twice, then onto Istanbul for the filming of From Russia with Love, he discovers Fleming is secretly determined to right their one shared intelligence failure: "Operation Flea" - the key to a bio-weapon of terrifying scope that could bring Britain and America to their knees.
With cameos by Sean Connery, Robert Shaw, and the death-obsessed Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima, Craig McDonald again deftly mixes fact and fiction for a darkly seductive historical romp through the mid-20th Century.
This is the penultimate Hector Lassiter literary thriller in the Edgar/Anthony-awards nominated series BookPage declared "wildly inventive" and The Chicago Tribune calls "most unusual, and readable crime fiction to come along in years."
Ian Fleming and Hector Lassiter: Novelists, ex-spies and, at last, lions in winter.
It's 1963, and the future isn't what it used to be. Lassiter senses the culture is slowly but…
It was the shot heard ’round the world: On July 2, 1961, Ernest Hemingway died from a shotgun blast. It’s 1965, and two men have come to Ketchum, Idaho to confront the widow Mary Hemingway — men who have serious doubts about the true circumstances of Hemingway’s death. One is Hector Lassiter, the oldest and best of Hemingway’s friends, the last man standing of the Lost Generation. The other is Hemingway scholar Richard Paulson who sets out to prove that Mary actually murdered her famous husband.
Print the Legend is a literary thriller about Hemingway's death and the patina that perceived suicide lends the author's legend, an exploration of the sinister shadow play and co-dependence that binds authors and their academics. It is a love story that finds the aging Hector Lassiter striving to protect the young and pregnant Hannah Paulson as sinister forces gather around her, threatening her and her unborn child.
Ingeniously plotted and executed, Print the Legend is an epic masterpiece from Craig McDonald. Beginning to end, I was riveted by this story of character, history and intrigue." —Michael Connelly
“Hector Lassiter is a compelling character but also a fascinating forum for McDonald's historical, social, and artistic observations. For all the wonderful action, slick dialogue, and plot twists McDonald throws at the reader, he's equally interested in saying something substantial about time and place. Not to be missed.” —Michael Koryta
“With each of his Hector Lassiter novels, Craig McDonald has stretched his canvas wider and unfurled tales of increasingly greater resonance. With Print the Legend, his triumphant third novel in the series, McDonald cunningly blends high, low and pulp American culture at the mid-century. While the scale is immense, McDonald's hand is deft, and we never forget that, at its center, this is a human story, complex and bruising and deeply felt. As big as the scope, we are never far from the novel's true, pulsing center: the sumptuously etched characters of the widow Mary Hemingway, aspiring writer Hannah Paulson and our beloved Hector himself.” —Megan Abbott
“McDonald skillfully and ingeniously mixes fact with fiction… McDonald’s background as a journalist and crime fiction critic helps him to piece together an intriguing literary thriller.” —Mystery Scene
It was the shot heard ’round the world: On July 2, 1961, Ernest Hemingway died from a shotgun blast. It’s 1965, and two men have come to Ketchum, Idaho to confront the widow Mary…
December 1950: A killer blizzard is smothering the Midwest. America is staggering into the Korean War and a Tennessee Senator has the nation riveted by his anticipated televised grilling of mob kingpins—a public spectacle and galling embarrassment to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover who has steadfastly denied the existence of the Mafia. In a snowbound hotel bar, crime novelist Hector Lassiter is reunited with old friend Jimmy Hanrahan, an Irish cop committed to catching the one criminal who got away. Jimmy’s in pursuit of America’s most macabre serial killer—the so-called “Torso Slayer” or “Cleveland Headhunter”—a prankish psychotic who has long eluded capture by Jimmy and famed “Untouchable” Eliot Ness. Hector and Jimmy’s reunion is interrupted when a young girl tugs on Hector’s sleeve and says, “Please, mister—my mommy needs help.” The little girl drags Hector and Jimmy from the bar into a deadly crossfire and cross-country chase—pursued by mobsters, corrupt cops, disgruntled federal officials, a fearsome bounty hunter and an army of rogue private investigators. Hector, the maverick, ever “the running kind,” is also confronted with the woman who may be his salvation—the one who offers a prospect of the settled life that has so long eluded Hector, if he can survive through to the New Year. Along the snowbound back roads of lost America, Hector and Jimmy face devastating betrayals, duplicitous women and the prospect of near-certain death in the deserts of Mexico. Hector and Jimmy find themselves locked into a history-changing death race that tests their friendship and bring them in contact with a cast of 20th-Century notables including crooner/mob schmoozer Frank Sinatra and his sultry, soon-to-be wife, Ava Gardner. The Running Kind expertly blends fact and fiction for a darkly humorous, hard-boiled rollick that evokes the feel and pace of Craig McDonald’s highly acclaimed, Edgar & Anthony-nominated debut novel (and forthcoming graphic novel) Head Games. *** “With each of his Hector Lassiter novels, Craig McDonald has stretched his canvas wider and unfurled tales of increasingly greater resonance.” —Megan Abbott “Reading a Hector Lassiter novel is like having a great uncle pull you aside, pour you a tumbler of rye, and tell you a story about how the 20th century ‘really’ went down.” —Duane Swierczynski “What critics might call eclectic, and Eastern folks quirky, we Southerners call cussedness — and it’s the cornerstone of the American genius. As “There’s a right way, a wrong way, and my way.” You want to see how that looks on the page, pick up any of Craig McDonald’s novels. He’s built him a nice little shack out there way off all the reg’lar roads, and he’s brewing some fine, heady stuff. Leave your money under the rock and come back in an hour.” —James Sallis “Craig McDonald is wily, talented and – rarest of the rare – a true original. He writes melancholy poetry that actually has melancholy poets wandering around, but don’t turn your backs on them, either.” —Laura Lippman “James Ellroy + Kerouac + Coen brothers + Tarantino = Craig McDonald” —Amazon.fr
December 1950: A killer blizzard is smothering the Midwest. America is staggering into the Korean War and a Tennessee Senator has the nation riveted by his anticipated televised…
World War II: the last good fight. In his own words, novelist Hector Lassiter confides the secret history of his clandestine campaigns in the European theatre and beyond, and his long, bloody battle of wits against a Nazi filmmaker. Aided by a beautiful OSS operative and a two-fisted Irish cop-turned-Army intelligence officer, Hector takes on the impossible mission of smuggling a hard-hunted Jewish orphan from France while pursued by the might of Germany's occupying army. The high-stakes chase extends from decadent Berlin to occupied France, from post-war Hollywood to the steaming jungles of Brazil. A dazzling fusion of crime fiction and espionage thriller, Roll the Credits is also a haunting study of the birth of film noir and the bloody underbelly of cinematic history, with a supporting cast including icons of the Lost Generation and heroes of the French resistance *** "A writer of truly unique voice, approach, and ambition, Craig McDonald delivers again with "Roll the Credits." Hector Lassiter is a compelling character but also a fascinating forum for McDonald's historical, social, and artistic observations. For all the wonderful action, slick dialogue, and plot twists McDonald throws at the reader, he's equally interested in saying something substantial about time and place. Not to be missed." -Michael Koryta
World War II: the last good fight. In his own words, novelist Hector Lassiter confides the secret history of his clandestine campaigns in the European theatre and beyond, and his…
Nazis, black magic and secret history collide in Craig McDonald's The Great Pretender. In 2007, McDonald launched the Hector Lassiter series with the Edgar Award-nominated debut, "Head Games," pairing the globetrotting, larger-than-life crime novelist with equally legendary filmmaker and amateur magician Orson Welles. McDonald's international bestselling and critically acclaimed follow-up, "Toros & Torsos," extended the story of Hector and Orson's uneasy friendship while exploring the infamous murder of Elizabeth Short, the so-called 'Black Dahlia', whom some came to suspect Welles of actually having killed. "The Great Pretender" fits the capstone on the Lassiter/Welles legend, spanning their decades-long, uneasy association from the run-up to Welles' infamous War of the Worlds "Panic Broadcast of 1938" to the set of the noir classic "The Third Man" and the ruins of post-war Vienna. The novel finds the actor and author in a race for a lost holy relic promising its possessor infinite power but a ghastly death if lost. Hector and Orson's competitors in their quest for the 'Spear of Destiny' or 'Holy Lance' include German occultists, members of the Third Reich, a sensuous Creole Voodoo priestess and a strangely obsessed J. Edgar Hoover. Drawing on dark historical legend and rich in atmosphere and character, The Great Pretender is the latest instalment in the series BookPage called "wildly inventive" and The Chicago Tribune declared the "most unusual, and readable" crime fiction "to come along in years." *** Praise "With each of his Hector Lassiter novels, Craig McDonald has stretched his canvas wider and unfurled tales of increasingly greater resonance." -Megan Abbott "Reading a Hector Lassiter novel is like having a great uncle pull you aside, pour you a tumbler of rye, and tell you a story about how the 20th century 'really' went down." -Duane Swierczynski "What critics might call eclectic, and Eastern folks quirky, we Southerners call cussedness -- and it's the cornerstone of the American genius. As in: "There's a right way, a wrong way, and my way." You want to see how that looks on the page, pick up any of Craig McDonald's novels. He's built him a nice little shack out there way off all the reg'lar roads, and he's brewing some fine, heady stuff. Leave your money under the rock and come back in an hour." -James Sallis "Craig McDonald is wily, talented and - rarest of the rare - a true original. He writes melancholy poetry that actually has melancholy poets wandering around, but don't turn your backs on them, either." -Laura Lippman "James Ellroy + Kerouac + Coen brothers + Tarantino = Craig McDonald." -Amazon.fr
Nazis, black magic and secret history collide in Craig McDonald's The Great Pretender. In 2007, McDonald launched the Hector Lassiter series with the Edgar Award-nominated debut,…
Key West, 1925: the USA's southernmost point and the most un-American of American locales; a rowdy border town surrounded by water and populated by sports fishermen, naval veterans and Cuban revolutionists - misfits and mavericks, all. After several years abroad, crime writer Hector Lassiter arrives on "Bone Key" to reunite with his lost love Brinke Devlin, a fellow author and the woman destined to become the first Mrs. Lassiter. Hector finds an island in turmoil - beset by fatal fires and savage attacks against women that the local press attributes to a baseball bat-wielding fiend dubbed "The Key West Clubber."
When one of the Clubber's murders hits too close to home, the newlyweds begin to poke around the crimes. What they find casts doubt on the possibility of a single culprit. By turns sexy, sly and sinister, Forever's Just Pretend barrels along at a page-turning pace to a shattering conclusion that casts new light on Hector Lassiter and his legend.
"I loved Brinke Devlin the first time she came on the page and I loved her at the end, too. She's a fascinating character." -James Sallis, author of DRIVE
Key West, 1925: the USA's southernmost point and the most un-American of American locales; a rowdy border town surrounded by water and populated by sports fishermen, naval…
Picturesque Killarney might seem the perfect place to enjoy the rare gift of sun but the town has got the blues. Bernard Dunphy, eccentric jarvey and guitarist, is pining for his unrequited love and has to contend with an ailing mother and an ailing horse. His troubled friend Jack gets embroiled in a violent crime. A trio of girlfriends becomes entangled in the terrible webs of their own making. The novel fluctuates between darkness and light as the protagonists struggle with their inner demons. Can friendship, love and music save their sinking souls? "Colin O'Sullivan writes with a style and a swagger all his own. His voice - unique, strong, startlingly expressive - both comes from and adds to Ireland's long and lovely literary lineage. Like many of that island's sons and daughters, O'Sullivan sends language out on a gleeful spree, exuberant, defiant, ever-ready for a party. Only a soul of stone could resist joining in." - Niall Griffiths
Picturesque Killarney might seem the perfect place to enjoy the rare gift of sun but the town has got the blues. Bernard Dunphy, eccentric jarvey and guitarist, is pining for his…
