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    Big City, Bad Blood
    Unavailable
    Big City, Bad Blood
    Unavailable
    Big City, Bad Blood
    Ebook356 pages6 hours

    Big City, Bad Blood

    By Sean Chercover

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A disillusioned newspaper reporter turned private detective, Ray Dudgeon isn't trying to save the world. He just wants to do an honest job, and do it well. But when doing an honest job threatens society's most powerful and corrupt, Ray's odds for survival make for a sucker's bet. . . .

    While working on a movie in Chicago, Hollywood locations manager Bob Loniski saw something he shouldn't have. Now he's a prosecution witness against a suspected member of the Chicago Outfit. Petrified, he comes to Ray for protection. Ray's mob contacts insist that they have no interest in Loniski, so he takes the bodyguard gig.

    Then people start dying and everything goes to hell.

    Ray's investigation leads to a stash of blackmail files involving the sex trade, Washington political corruption, and a deadly power struggle among Chicago's organized crime bosses—setting the FBI, the Chicago police, and the mob on his tail. He now holds evidence against top-ranking cops and politicians . . . but with the line between good and bad blurring, he doesn't know who he can trust.

    If he does the right thing, Ray is sure to die. But if he doesn't, how can he live with himself?

    From the back alleys of Chicago to the man-sions of Beverly Hills to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., Sean Chercover's Big City, Bad Blood propels readers relentlessly forward on a bullet-fast, adrenaline-pumping ride they will not soon forget.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061856266
    Unavailable
    Big City, Bad Blood
    Author

    Sean Chercover

    Sean Chercover is a former private detective turned novelist and screenwriter. A native of Toronto, he has held a motley assortment of jobs over the years, including video editor, scuba diver, nightclub magician, encyclopedia salesman, and truck driver. He is the author of two award-winning novels featuring Chicago private investigator Ray Dudgeon: Big City, Bad Blood and Trigger City. After living in Chicago; New Orleans; and Columbia, South Carolina, Sean has returned to Toronto where he lives with his wife and son. His fiction has won the Anthony, Shamus, CWA Dagger, Dilys, and Crimespree awards, and been shortlisted for the Edgar, Barry, Macavity, Arthur Ellis and ITW Thriller awards.

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    Reviews for Big City, Bad Blood

    4/5

    77 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      somewhere in between Elvis Cole and Spencer, Ray Dudgeon fills the hard-boiled PI role for Chicago and the 'Outfit'. I enjoyed the setting and as always I enjoy a "good good guy beats the bad guy at his own game" story. Recommended!
    • 4/5
      I'd been eyeing this one for a while. Somehow though all the reviews that referenced Elvis Cole and such left me wanting to avoid the book. Eventually I took the plunge though and don't regret it at all. It's a good debut novel. PI Dudgen is an interesting character and the case involving rival fractions of the "Outfit" is interesting. My one caveat is that frequently the quality of the writing will slip. You are going along, captured in the story and BAM! A passage so wooden that its like you ran into a wall. Fortunately Chercover seems to recover quickly and you are soon lost in the story again. I look forward to watching his writing improve over future episodes.
    • 4/5
      A decent little detective/noire/mafia book. Some violence, some suspense, perhaps a bit too much politicizing, but oh well, you can't have everything.Ray Dudgeon is an interesting character. You like him and want him to make out okay, even though you suspect he won't in the long run. Story has a bit of mob history and some anti-government sentiment, and a basic premise that the world is corrupt. If you like that sort of stuff and don't mind a resolution that is just slightly short of miraculous, you'll like this book. It is enjoyable and quick.
    • 2/5
      Tough-guy detective stories have always been a hit-and-miss proposition for me. I tend to either love them or be left totally cold by them, and – much as I wish I could – I’ve never been able to predict, in advance, which ones are going to fall into which category. Every new author or series is an experiment: a complete shot in the dark. It’s led me to some very pleasant surprises—Lee Child’s Killing Floor, Don Winslow’s California Fire and Life—but left a trail of unfinished “meh” books I couldn’t make myself care about.Big City, Bad Blood is one of the latter. It’s got a lot going for it: sharply drawn Chicago locations, deftly drawn supporting characters, and competent renditions of classic private-eye set pieces. Meetings with a local mob boss, conversations with a reporter-friend, and a brief, brutal encounter with two hired goons on a dark sidewalk are all done in the best old-school PI tradition. You could imagine them happening (with slight adjustments for language and period detail) to Sam Spade in 1930s San Francisco, Philip Marlowe in 1940s LA, or Mike Hammer in 1950s New York. Yet, for all that, it utterly failed to grab—much less hold—my attention . I lasted 4-5 chapters, and set it aside.The problem, I think, may be that carefully rendered “old-school” feel. Tough-guy characters like Travis McGee, Elvis Cole or Spenser translate the spirit of the mid-century PIs to the times and places in which their stories are set. Ray Dudgeon feels like an attempt to translate a whole character, intact, out of the forties and into the 21st century. Big City, Bad Blood is clearly set in the present, but Ray and his exploits feel awkward and out-of-place there, like a black-and-white clipping from a 1946 issue of Life pasted, incongruously, into a richly colored color photo of today.
    • 5/5
      Went back and retrieved this from my to be read pile after actually reading the second book in the series. As a character I quite like Chercover's PI Ray Dudgeon and the sense of humour portrayed well in the book. It actually introduces the character well and gives just enough of his back story to explain some of his actions though I would say the apparent ease with which he is able to gain access to senators and judges does seem unlikely and their subsequent intervention on his behalf is crucial. Overall a thoroughly enjoyable read and recommended.
    • 4/5
      Chicago PI that takes on the outfit. Good characters throughout. Chicago in a primary role. The MC left made uneasy at times with his decisions.
      I will read the next book in the series and hope the MC figures himself out.
    • 4/5
      Once a Chicago reporter, now a private investigator, Ray Dudgeon is hired to protect a Hollywood manager, Bob Loniski, from the bad guys. The real B-A-D bad guys. The guys that are part of Chicago's organized crime, type of bad guys, and all because Bob saw something he shouldn't have. Ray discovers a whole boat load of trouble as he gets in-between the two.This was a very good debut and well-deserving of the Shamus Award that Chercover recently won for the Best PI First Novel. The main character, Ray, is a tough character, yet with a soft side, too. His sense of humor was appealing to me and his two buddies added some depth. I ended up getting somewhat tired of people teaching each other lessons, but overall a very good suspenseful read - well done. The second in the series Trigger City just came out last month (October, 2008). (4/5)Originally posted on: "Thoughts of Joy..."
    • 5/5
      nicely paced, compelling story