While we await Christa Faust's Money Shot, here's a collection of Hard Case Crime reviews I found. Yep, another link for you!

I'm reading Money Shot right now. Good beginning.

Finished Money Shot last night. Although the setting (the porn industry) isn't one that I would ordinarily be interested in, and the plot is a little simplistic, I still enjoyed the book a lot. Definitely one of the better originals that HCC has done. The content might be a little rough for some folks, but if you like the gritty stuff, it's recommended.

Excellent! And the porn industry setting sounds good to me! I'm picking this up today. So let this serve as your friendly monthly reminder. Money Shot is available in stores now.

Anyone else having trouble finding Money Shot in stores? There are three bookstores close to me that carry HCC titles, and I can always find the most recent title on release date at one of those stores. This title is proving to be an exception. No one has it. Makes me wonder if retailers have shied away from the cover/title or subject matter...or are decisions like that even made on a title-by-title basis?

I seldom buy books in the bookstore (although I can't really recall seeing any HCC books on the shelves)... But yeah, they order on a book-by-book basis.

On the positive side, maybe they're just all sold out!

I was having trouble finding them in Borders. They were always good about stocking HCC titles at least a week before the new month starts.

So on a whim I went to a Barnes & Noble on the 29th, and lo and behold they were there.

I went to one B&N and that store had two copies. Now they only have one.

Thanks to bishop2knight, I now have a pristine copy of Money Shot. Thanks dude!

I'm about 100 pages in. Love the porn backdrop. So far, the protagonist seems "along for the ride" in her own story, so I'm hoping she takes center stage soon. Good stuff, though!

November's release is up.



Life isn't always cheap south of the border—some lives are worth a million dollars. That’s what the Mexican kidnapping cartel was demanding for Carl Ledbetter’s wife. So Carl reached out to the one person he knew with a chance in hell of saving her, a deadly man whose own life he’d saved in the sands of Iraq. It was time to call in some favors. Because some situations call for negotiation, but some...call for gun work.


First publication ever!
By the award-winning author of THE KILL RIFF and screenwriter of numerous feature films and television shows


Raves for the Work of David J. Schow...


"One dark speeding bullet of a novel...It’s a book I couldn’t put down."
— Joe R. Lansdale


"All of Schow’s glittering weapons are sharper than ever before."
— Peter Straub


"If the pulps were still around, Schow would be their king."
— Booklist

Nice! I'm a Schow fan from way back. Looking forward to seeing how his style translates to the genre.

I have been wanting to read some of this genre for a while and this thread has piqued my interest pretty heavily. I thought about snagging a couple of the books at the local Borders but it seems more cost effective to just join the monthly club since they allow you to cancel at any time.

So thanks to you bastards and the great reviews and beautiful cover images i'll now have a new monthly addiction.

Welcome aboard and enjoy the ride!

That description is just a wee bit cheesy.

If you are just getting into the Hard Case Crime series, Amazon may be a good place to get some of the early titles.

Doing a quick search, 37 Hard Case Crime titles are part of Amazon's 4-for-3 promotion. Since the books typically retail for $6.99 (though Stephen King's Colorado Kid is listed at $5.99), you could add four to your cart and qualify for free saver shipping - despite the final total being less than $25.

So in the end you can get 4 Hard Case Crime novels for $20.97, which breaks down to $5.24 each.

The latest from Charles Ardai...

**********************************

It's been a while since I've written to you -- sorry about that. Things have been hopping at Hard Case Crime, not least of all because I'm still writing Book #50 and racing to beat the deadline. In the meantime, you can get a sneak peek at Book #49, which we just added to our Web site: GUN WORK by David J. Schow. Dave is, among many other things, an acclaimed horror author and a successful Hollywood screenwriter, having contributed scripts to TV shows such as MASTERS OF HORROR and THE OUTER LIMITS and to movie series such as TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, THE CROW, and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. He is also a huge fan of our genre -- in five years I can't remember a writer getting as excited about crafting a book for our line as he did. Working on GUN WORK with Dave was a huge treat, and you're in for a lot of fun when the book hits stores around the end of this year. Take a look at a cover and an excerpt from the first chapter at www.hardcasecrime.com.

Meanwhile, our February title -- MONEY SHOT by Christa Faust -- has been making waves in a big way. She not only got two pages in the new issue of Penthouse, she's mentioned on the cover, too; plus, the book has received raves all over the Web (including coverage on a number of sites devoted to the adult entertainment industry, in which the book is set) and has coverage upcoming in Newsday and the Houston Chronicle. Everyone agrees that MONEY SHOT is a wild ride by an author to watch. If you haven't taken the ride yet, visit your local bookseller and ask for a copy. Or if they're sold out, you can always order one directly from our friends at Dorchester Publishing by calling 1-800-481-9191. (Feel free to ask them about the Hard Case Crime Book Club if you'd like to get each month's new title delivered to you automatically by mail, at 43% off the cover price. The cost of shipping eats into that discount, so the price is closer to a wash in the end, but you still come out ahead by a little...and that way you're sure never to miss any of our books!)

Our March title, which I believe some booksellers already have in hand, is ZERO COOL by John Lange, author of our earlier title GRAVE DESCEND. This one's another reprint of a long-unavailable book, but with a twist -- the author has added a new opening and closing chapter to bookend the story, making this the definitive edition of one of his rarest works. Since it hasn't been published in any form for 30 years, the odds are good you haven't read it -- but even if you did read it back then in its original form, I think you'll want to give it another look.

Upcoming after that: our Robert Bloch "double" edition, featuring two novels (SHOOTING STAR and SPIDERWEB) that haven't been published since their original appearance in the 1950s; Shepard Rifkin's searing story of killing and retribution in the Deep South, THE MURDERER VINE; and then Donald E. Westlake's comic romp SOMEBODY OWES ME MONEY.

Looking ahead to 2009, we'll be kicking off the year with a new discovery of a truly obscure long-lost title by the great Lawrence Block -- and though we're not announcing just what it is yet, let me just say that a recent headline story in the newspapers gave us a bit of a start. Let the guessing begin!

What's cooking for later in '09? We've got another Westlake, a real powerhouse novel appearing for the first time under the title the author originally intended ("THE CUTIE"); we've got the late Roger Zelazny's never-before-published international thriller THE DEAD MAN'S BROTHER; and we've got a terrific hard-boiled detective novel called HOUSE DICK about skullduggery in a Washington D.C. hotel, written by none other than...E. Howard Hunt. Yes, *that* E. Howard Hunt. (If you're too young to remember him, look him up online. Just know that though he achieved notoriety for other activities, he was also one of the most prolific and consistently engaging crime writers of the paperback era.)

In the meantime, I hope you all had a good Valentine's Day, and that it put you in the mood for some sexy, dangerous reading. Won't you come over here by the fire, lie down, and see what's under our covers?

Regards,
Charles
------------
Charles Ardai
Editor, Hard Case Crime

I couldn't wait for my book club subscription to start so i hit up the local library for a bunch of the books. Due to the raves in this thread i started with Little Girl Lost. Wow, it completely hooked me and blew me away. Next up is the sequel.

That write-up of Money Shot sounds pretty good. Since I assume my book club membership will begin in March i may have to go to the local Borders and see if they have Money Shot.

I reviewed Money Shot today in the Chicago Sun-Times.

I finished Money Shot last night and really enjoyed it. It's definitely in my Top 5 for the HCC line so far. Now to start on Zero Cool.

Dang...I am running behind again. I finished Deadly Beloved the other day...Collins' weakest entry into the HCC arsenal thus far, imo.

Hey Geofferson, long time no see! Glad to have you back.

You know, I saw the reviews for Deadly Beloved and stayed away, I'm afraid to say. Same with A Diet of Treacle. Plus, my to-read pile is just towering right now. Gotta make sacrifices...

The March title looms...

I hope they get my subscription started up for March.

I've never read her work before, but Christa Faust is a damn fine writer! I'm about 3/4 of the way through Money Shot and I'm already looking forward to her next contribution to Hard Case Crime. More Malloy & Angel I say!