Posts Tagged: Tom Kakonis

Great Crime Writers Create Memorable Bad Guys

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Great crime writers like James Patterson, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, and even horror writers like Stephen King draw readers into their stories by creating complex villains we love to hate. In writing my crime novels, I pay just as much attention to developing the villain (or in some cases, villains) as I do when crafting the protagonist. Both characters must have strong, complex personalities and interest the reader to the point of near obsession. If a writer can do that, he or she has pulled the reader into the dark world all thriller readers want – fast, dangerous, and with plenty of unexpected twists and turns. WHAT MAKES A GREAT VILLAIN? Not too long ago, Publishers Weekly... more

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Thrillers vs Mysteries: What’s The Difference?

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You’ve no doubt heard the terms crime fiction, mysteries and thrillers – but is there really a difference? The way books are categorized is influenced by a wide range of factors, from an author’s reputation to marketing goals to the space on a store’s shelves. However, there are definable differences between crime fiction, mysteries and thrillers – and understanding them can help you find exactly what you want to read. Crime fiction is the blanket term used to describe books that deal with any aspect of crime – including those who commit and solve it. If a book deals with detectives, police officers, lawyers, and of course, criminals, as a general rule, it’s a crime fiction... more

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Criss Cross: A Wild & Entertaining Romp

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Novelist James L. Thane, author of the crime novels No Place to Die and Until Death, shares his fondness for Tom Kakonis' thriller Criss Cross. In Cross Cross, his second crime novel, Tom Kakonis brings together a disparate cast of odd, strange and curious characters who come together very uneasily in the hope of making one big score. Principal among them is Mitchell Morse, a former college football player and ex-cop who's spiraled downhill to the point where he's now employed as a security guard at a Fleets superstore in Grand Rapids, Michigan, chasing down shoplifters. Before being fired from his last job, Mitch had met a fellow security guard named Jean Satterfield. Mitch has not... more

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Creating Waverly: The Story Behind MICHIGAN ROLL

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The day after Labor Day, 1986, I sat down at my desk in the cramped room I called, without a pinch of irony, my “study,” and faced one more time the terror of the blank page. More accurately, one last time, for with three and a half rejection-dusty manuscripts on a shelf behind me, I had pledged to myself this would be my final attempt at fiction writing. Another failure and I would settle in my dwindling years for the genteel poverty of the academician’s life, complete with a variety of harmless hobbies and arcane interests. After all—a 56 year old first novelist? Seemed preposterous, a bad joke. Nevertheless, a promise is a promise, and so I set to work, and slowly, painfully,... more

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Brash Words: Lots of Positive Buzz Leading Up to Our Sept 2 Launch

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Treasure Coast by author Tom Kakonis

We're only a few days from our Sept. 2nd launch and already we're getting a lot of positive buzz. We were thrilled by an interview with our co-founders, Lee Goldberg & Joel Goldman, in Kirkus Reviews. Here's an excerpt: The Brash editions I’ve seen so far are handsome, trade-size paperbacks, with bold cover imagery and elegant interior design. “Joel and I decided right off that we were either going to do this ‘first-class’ or not at all,” says Goldberg, “with high-quality covers that vividly and definitively establish a franchise for each author or series that we are publishing. We also decided that our covers would be contemporary, regardless of when the stories take... more

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Tom Kakonis: The Best Hardboiled Writer Working Today

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Criss Cross by author Tom Kakonis

Don Herron is a crime fiction reviewer and an acknowledged expert on the hardboiled greats Dashiell Hammett and Charles Willeford, two authors that are hard to match, much less top. But now he says there's a writer on the scene who is in the same league... Okay, so you’ve read Hammett and you’ve read Raymond Chandler, and you still want more great hardboiled writing. I’m not going to give a personal recommendation to a lot more, but then I’m tough. I think the novels The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity by James M. Cain and Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson are great. You won’t go wrong reading the crime novels of the black ex-patriat writer Chester... more

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