SOFTLY, SOFTLY
Ricky Nardilo is a cop in the small town where he grew up. His position there is tenuous – he doesn’t know who on the police force he can trust. Everyone in town is owned by Vale.
Vale who haunts his life and watches his every step.
It wasn’t a great town when Ricky and his friends were growing up. Drugs and desperation had seeped into the pores of everything there. But things are changing, gentrification has arrived.
Nardilo is torn apart by the money being used to rebuild the town. Corruption money, murder money, Vale’s money.
In retribution, Nardilo burns down Vales’s businesses and yet … nothing happens to him as a result. How long will Vale’s tolerance of him, and the past, keep going.
Cops are dead, tension mounts and the result will be cataclysmic.
You won’t race through the books by Jason Beech. Rather, you’ll engage in a close reading, parsing the words and experiencing a delayed impact that will jolt you.
~ June Lorraine
See review of City of Forts below Jason’s interview
Jason Beech advises this about his author photo, “I’m a ray of sunshine.” That must be accurate because I really laughed.
Once I read both City of Forts and American Spartan, I had questions, how, who, why? So straight to the source, Jason Beech, and here’s what he said …
What the hell am I doing writing a novel set in America with exclusively American characters? Surely, I have no legitimacy. The danger is I come off as a reverse Kevin Costner in Robin Hood mode.
~ Jason Beech
City of Forts
Summer of Ruin
Where the story of Ricky, Liz, Bixby, and Tanais began. All of them young teenagers, hanging out for the summer break.
They spend their time in an abandoned housing site, getting away from their grim town to a place they call their own.
But the Ghost Boys, hoodie wearing gangsters, are moving in and setting fires to the houses. And a chance collapse of a floor reveals a man’s body in a basement.
It all goes wrong from there, in ways deeper than you can imagine.
~ June Lorraine
MurderInCommon is a Feedspot Top 100 Crime Novel Website
11 responses to “Jason Beech: American Spartan +Interview +Bonus Book-1 Review”
Those slow-burn novels can really be engrossing, June. I think that’s especially true when the characters are well-developed and have layers. This one sounds like a tense, suspenseful story.
These books have it all for me Margot 🙂
[…] I featured two books by Jason Beech here at Murder in Common back in January. Take a look at them and read his interview here. […]
I liked what he said about his characters talking in an American accent, and that’s how he knew he was ready to set the story in the U.S. An good writing observation.
A lot of the way the book was written made sense when I realized he was from England 🙂
This is so much an embodiment of our present-day corruption.
Thanks for the great review, June.
Ack well then…you deserved it. More now please…
On it.
I, too, laughed when I read the ray of sunshine remark. Sounds as though there are lot of important issues in the book.
I know right 🙂
Book-1 City of Forts is a true coming of age story and in American Spartan they are in their twenties…the impact of that summer still within.