Posts By: Brash Admin

Ralph

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Today we're publishing  The Buy Back Blues, the 12th and final book in the Hardman series by Ralph Dennis. To mark the occasion, we're sharing the revealing, deeply personal essay that author Cynthia Williams wrote about Ralph as an afterword for Murder is Not an Odd Job, the 6th book in the series. I knew Ralph Dennis first as a teacher, and later as a friend and mentor. Eventually, he asked me to marry him, but I refused, and our friendship ended. Obviously, I will remember Ralph differently from the men who knew him, because he was, in some ways, a different person with me. I met Ralph Dennis in 1966. I was in my junior year at UNC- Chapel Hill, majoring in... more

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A Hardman is Good To Find

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Paul Bishop is a huge Hardman fan and in this essay,  from our reissue of Pimp For The Dead, he talks about the cultural forces that shaped the creation of the series...and the market forces that doomed it to obscurity. Paul is 35-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department. His career included a three year tour with his department's Anti-Terrorist Division and over twenty-five years' experience in the investigation of sex crimes. He currently conducts law enforcement related seminars for city, state, and private agencies.  In 1974, Atlanta Deathwatch, the first Hardman novel by Ralph Dennis, debuted as a paperback original from Popular Library. It was done... more

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Lee Goldberg’s Obsession to Republish Ralph Dennis

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Lee Goldberg has written an essay for the CrimeReads website about how his love for Ralph Dennis' incredible Hardman series of crime novels led to him co-founding Brash Books. Here's an excerpt: Jim Hardman is in his 40s, a pudgy, balding ex-cop with a steady girlfriend…who does odd jobs with his drinking buddy Hump Evans, a black ex-NFL player who supports his playboy lifestyle by hiring himself out as muscle. They are functioning alcoholics, drinking booze morning, noon and night as if its mineral water, doing whatever they have to do, short of murder or bank robbery, to make a living in the seamy underworld of 1970s Atlanta, as equal partners and, although it remains unspoken,... more

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Ben Jones: My Friend HARDMAN

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Brash Books is republishing the 12 Hardman novels by Ralph Dennis.... a brilliant series of crime novels long sought-after by collectors and beloved by crime writers. Very little is known about the author, who died in 1988. So we sought out some of the people who knew him best to tell us about him. Ben Jones was one of Ralph's oldest friends and became famous as an actor (he was "Cooter" on Dukes of Hazzard) and later as a Congressman from Georgia in the House of Representatives. His remembrance of Ralph below appears as the Afterword in the Brash edition of the Hardman novel Down Among the Jocks. If, on a late summer afternoon in 1973, you had walked into George’s Deli on Highland... more

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The Literary Life of Ralph Dennis

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RICHARD A. MOORE is a former reporter, a retired public relations executive, and the author of various short stories published by Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock and other mystery magazines and anthologies. He played a big role in making it possible for Brash Books to acquire the rights to the published and unpublished works by Ralph Dennis, an author perhaps best known among crime writers for his 12 legendary Hardman novels...which we will begin re-releasing today. This essay has previously appeared, in various forms, on an array of crime fiction blogs... and is reprinted in the Brash edition of THE GOLDEN GIRL AND ALL, the third book in the Hardman series.  Ralph Dennis... more

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A Brash Holiday Season is Coming

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The holiday season is upon us, and it's that time of year for gratitude and reflection. In this edition of the Brash Books newsletter, we share our fond remembrance of a beloved Brash author, along with another amazing award, a fresh new story, a rave review—and an abundance of upcoming releases for your reading pleasure. DOUBLE WIDE WINS AGAIN! The awards keep coming for DOUBLE WIDE and Leo W. Banks! Banks' debut thriller just received the 2018 Best Mystery Novel award from the New Mexico Book Co-op, announced at a gala awards banquet in Albuquerque on November 16th. Along with this latest honor, DOUBLE WIDE also has received two Western Writers of America 2018 Spur Awards and Best... more

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