NO ONE LEFT TO TELL by Jordan Dane (May 2008 - HarperCollins)
A hit man learns a lesson in irony when the hunter becomes the hunted in a deadly game of paintball in the dark.Now the man’s body serves as a message from the past, unraveling the lives of the people touched by an unresolved crime.To solve the case, a female detective and her Hispanic partner must sift through the tragic memories of a reluctant man—whose past holds the key to finding a killer..
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TELL NO LIES by Julie Compton (St. Martin’s Press, May 13, 2008)
“Good will, like a good name, is got by many actions, and lost by one.”
— Lord Jeffrey
For assistant district attorney Jack Hilliard, the protagonist of TELL NO LIES, truer words have never been spoken. When Jack finds himself simultaneously seduced by a dream job and a tempting woman, his moral compass starts to falter and he soon learns that bad decisions have even worse consequences. . .
“Compton’s debut is a taut, tense cautionary tale complete with courtroom drama and a surprise ending.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
SCORCH by Marc Paoletti (May 16, 2008 - Five Star) David Cole is the pyrotechnic supervisor on a Hollywood movie set. When he inadvertently crosses a ruthless producer with mob ties, his world is literally blown apart.The producer hires a hitman who tries to murder Cole by burning him alive with his own pyrotecnhic devices. Cole survives the attack, but his beloved son dies horribly. Framed for the crime and pursued by police, a badly burned Cole must endure unspeakable agony while relying on his knowledge of F/X and urban warfare to hunt the men responsible for his son’s murder. But time is running out. As Cole’s ravaged body deteriorates, so does his grip on reality. It isn’t long before he becomes a threat to friend and foe alike, which is nothing compared the price he could ultimately pay.
“What Paoletti adds to the requisite talent for staging inventive action sequences is an exquisite sensitivity to physical pain and something of Elmore Leonard’s gift for cutting out the parts everybody skips anyway…razor-sharp…” —KIRKUS
“SCORCH blew me away. The characters burn as hot as naphthalene, and the action hits with the power and precision of a actical nuke.” —Paul Staples, pyrotechnic supervisor on TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY and David Mamet’s THE UNIT