PM presents the new Switchblade imprint!
Switchblade - a different slice of hardboiled fiction where the dreamers and the schemers, the dispossessed and the damned, and the hobos and the rebels tango at the edge of society.
Switchblade
Switchblade is a noir imprint showcasing the grittiest in new work, illuminating the lamentably unavailable classics in the genre, and highlighting the shadows on the margins of the dark end of the street.
Series Editors: Gary Phillips and Andrea Gibbons
1. The Jook - Gary Phillips
2. I-5: A Novel of Crime, Transport, and Sex - Summer Brenner
3. Pike - Benjamin Whitmer
4. The Chieu Hoi Saloon - Michael Harris
The Jook
By Gary Phillips
$15.95
Zelmont Raines has slid a long way since his ability to jook, to out maneuver his opponents on the field, made him a Super Bowl winning wide receiver, earning him lucrative endorsement deals and more than his share of female attention. But Zee hasn’t always been good at saying no, so a series of missteps involving drugs, a paternity suit or two, legal entanglements, shaky investments and recurring injuries have virtually sidelined his career.
That is until Los Angeles gets a new pro franchise, the Barons, and Zelmont has one last chance at the big time he dearly misses. Just as it seems he might be getting back in the flow, he’s enraptured by Wilma Wells, the leggy and brainy lawyer for the team--who has a ruthless game plan all her own. And it’s Zelmont who might get jooked.
About the Author:
Gary Phillips' 25 years of community activism in Los Angeles on issues ranging from affordable housing to gang intervention to neighborhood empowerment served him well when he began writing crime novels. He has worked as a union organizer, political campaign coordinator, radio talk show host and teacher. He has written op-ed pieces for the L.A. Times Magazine, San Francisco Examiner, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Miami Herald and other newspapers. His novels include: The Perpetrators (2002), Bangers (2003) and the seven books in the Ivan Monk and Martha Chainey series. Gary has also contribued to and edited many short stories collections such as: The Cocaine Chronicles, Politics Noir, Orange County Noir, and The Darker Mask.
Reviews:
"Phillips, author of the acclaimed Ivan Monk series, takes elements of Jim Thompson (the ending), black-exploitation flicks (the profanity-fueled dialogue), and Penthouse magazine (the sex is anatomically correct) to create an over-the-top violent caper in which there is no honor, no respect, no love, and plenty of money. Anyone who liked George Pelecanos' King Suckerman is going to love this even-grittier take on many of the same themes."
--Wes Lukowsky, Booklist
“Enough gritty gossip, blistering action and trash talk to make real life L.A. seem comparatively wholesome.”
--Kirkus Reviews
“Gary Phillips writes tough and gritty parables about life and death on the mean streets--a place where sometimes just surviving is a noble enough cause. His is a voice that should be heard and celebrated. It rings true once again in The Jook, a story where all of Phillips’ talents are on display.”
--Michael Connelly, author of the Harry Bosch books
I-5: A Novel of Crime, Transport and Sex
By Summer Brenner
$15.95
A novel of crime, transport, and sex, I-5 tells the bleak and brutal story of Anya and her journey north from Los Angeles to Oakland on the interstate that bisects the Central Valley of California.
Anya is the victim of a deep deception. Someone has lied to her; and because of this lie, she is kept under lock and key, used by her employer to service men, and indebted for the privilege. In exchange, she lives in the United States and fantasizes on a future American freedom. Or as she remarks to a friend, "Would she rather be fucking a dog...or living like a dog?" In Anya’s world, it’s a reasonable question.
Much of I-5 transpires on the eponymous interstate. Anya travels with her “manager” and driver from Los Angeles to Oakland. It’s a macabre journey: a drop at Denny’s, a bad patch of fog, a visit to a “correctional facility,” a rendezvous with an organ grinder, and a dramatic entry across Oakland’s city limits.
About the Author:
Summer Brenner was raised in Georgia and migrated west, first to New Mexico and eventually to northern California where she has been a long-time resident. She has published books of both poetry and fiction and given scores of readings in the United States, France, and Japan. In addition to I-5, her nine books include: Ivy, Tale of a Homeless Girl in San Francisco, Dancers & the Dance, and The Soft Room.
Reviews:
"Insightful, innovative and riveting. After its lyrical beginning inside Anya's head, I-5 shifts momentum into a rollicking gangsters-on-the-lam tale that is in turns blackly humorous, suspenseful, heartbreaking and always populated by intriguing characters. Anya is a wonderful, believable heroine, her tragic tale told from the inside out, without a shred of sentimental pity, which makes it all the stronger. A twisty, fast-paced ride you won't soon forget."
--Denise Hamilton, author of the L.A.Times bestseller The Last Embrace.
"I'm in awe. I-5 moves so fast you can barely catch your breath. It's as tough as tires, as real and nasty as road rage, and best of all, it careens at breakneck speed over as many twists and turns as you'll find on The Grapevine. What a ride! I-5's a hard-boiled standout."
--Julie Smith, editor of New Orleans Noir and author of the Skip Langdon and Talba Wallis crime novel series
"In I-5, Summer Brenner deals with the onerous and gruesome subject of sex trafficking calmly and forcefully, making the reader feel the pain of its victims. The trick to forging a successful narrative is always in the details, and I-5 provides them in abundance. This book bleeds truth--after you finish it, the blood will be on your hands."
--Barry Gifford, author, poet and screenwriter
Pike
By Benjamin Whitmer
ISBN: 978-1-60486-089-4
Published July 2010
Format: Paperback
Size: 5 by 8
Page count: 224 Pages
Subjects: Fiction, Thriller
$15.95
Douglas Pike is no longer the murderous hustler he was in his youth, but reforming hasn't made him much kinder. He's just living out his life in his Appalachian hometown, working odd jobs with his partner, Rory, hemming in his demons the best he can. And his best seems just good enough until his estranged daughter overdoses and he takes in his twelve-year-old granddaughter, Wendy.
Just as the two are beginning to forge a relationship, Derrick Kreiger, a dirty Cincinnati cop, starts to take an unhealthy interest in the girl. Pike and Rory head to Cincinnati to learn what they can about Derrick and the death of Pike’s daughter, and the three men circle, evenly matched predators in a human wilderness of junkie squats, roadhouse bars and homeless Vietnam vet encampments.
Reviews:
“Without so much as a sideways glance towards gentility, Pike is one righteous mutherfucker of a read. I move that we put Whitmer’s balls in a vise and keep slowly notching up the torque until he’s willing to divulge the secret of how he managed to hit such a perfect stride his first time out of the blocks.”
--Ward Churchill
"Benjamin Whitmer’s Pike captures the grime and the rage of my not-so fair city with disturbing precision. The words don’t just tell a story here, they scream, bleed, and burst into flames. Pike, like its eponymous main character, is a vicious punisher that doesn’t mince words or take prisoners, and no one walks away unscathed. This one’s going to haunt me for quite some time."
--Nathan Singer
"This is what noir is, what it can be when it stops playing nice--blunt force drama stripped down to the bone, then made to dance across the page."
--Stephen Graham Jones
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COMING FAll 2010 The Chieu Hoi Saloon
By Michael Harris
Published: October 2010
ISBN: 978-1-60486-112-9
Format: Paperback
Page Count: 320
Dimensions: 8 by 5
Subjects: Fiction
$19.95
It’s 1992 and three people’s lives are about to collide against the flaming backdrop of the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. Vietnam vet Harry Hudson is a journalist fleeing his past: the war, a failed marriage, and a fear-ridden childhood. Rootless, he stutters, wrestles with depression, and is aware he's passed the point at which victim becomes victimizer. He explores the city's lowest dives, the only places where he feels at home. He meets Mama Thuy, a Vietnamese woman struggling to run a Navy bar in a tough Long Beach neighborhood, and Kelly Crenshaw, an African-American prostitute whose husband is in prison. They give Harry insight that maybe he can do something to change his fate in a gripping story that is both a character study and thriller.
Praise:
"Mike Harris' novel has all the brave force and arresting power of Celine and Dostoevsky in its descent into the depths of human anguish and that peculiar gallantry of the moral soul that is caught up in irrational self-punishment at its own failings. Yet Harris manages an amazing and transforming affirmation—the novel floats above all its pain on pure delight in the variety of the human condition. It is a story of those sainted souls who live in bars, retreating from defeat but rendered with such vividness and sensitivity that it is impossible not to care deeply about these figures from our own waking dreams. In an age less obsessed by sentimentality and mawkish 'uplift,' this book would be studied and celebrated and emulated."
--John Shannon, author of The Taking of the Waters and the Jack Liffey mysteries
"Michael Harris is a realist with a realist's unflinching eye for the hard truths of contemporary times. Yet in The Chieu Hoi Saloon, he gives us a hero worth admiring: the passive, overweight, depressed and sex-obsessed Harry Hudson, who in the face of almost overwhelming despair still manages to lead a valorous life of deep faith. In this powerful and compelling first novel, Harris makes roses bloom in the gray underworld of porno shops, bars and brothels by compassionately revealing the yearning loneliness beneath the grime—our universal human loneliness that seeks transcendence through love."
--Paula Huston, author of Daughters of Song and The Holy Way
"The Chieu Hoi Saloon concerns one Harry Hudson, the literary bastard son of David Goodis and Dorothy Hughes. Hardcore and unsparing, the story takes you on a ride with Harry in his bucket of a car and pulls you into his subterranean existence in bright daylight and gloomy shadow. One sweet read."
--Gary Phillips, author of The Jook
