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Amazon.com Review

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.