Big Town by Doug Swanson
The brilliant debut novel in the widely-acclaimed Jack Flippo series, an Edgar Award Finalist from the Mystery Writers of America and the winner of the John Creasey Award from the British Crime Writers Association
Jack Flippo was on the fast-track as a prosecutor for the Dallas D.A.’s office until an affair with a drug-dealer’s wife derailed his career. Now he’s a low-rent PI, hired by a sleazy attorney to get photos of a motivational speaker who has been cheating on his wife. But things go outrageously wrong, and Jack becomes entangled in a web of greed, betrayal sex, blackmail and murder…and that’s just the start.
“Detective fiction at its finest—fast, fun, and full of surprises. The characters are exuberantly dirty and the dialogue is pricelessly funny and true. Doug Swanson does Dallas the way Robert B. Parker does Boston, from the bottom up.” Carl Hiaasen
Books by Doug Swanson
Umbrella Man
The fourth, wild Jack Flippo adventure, “a comic caper worthy of Carl Hiassen or Elmore Leonard, with a uniquely Texas twist.” Booklist
Jack is trying to trace a home movie that could prove there was a second shooter, the so-called “Umbrella Man,” involved in the JFK assassination. To find it, he’s plunges into the world of conspiracy theorists and hucksters, including a woman with an inflatable doll collection in her living room and an ex-cop who drives tourists around Dealey Plaza in his 1963 Lincoln convertible while playing radio reports about the killing. But the assassination Jack should be worrying about is his own… there’s an oxygen-dependent hitman who wants the PI in his crosshairs.
House of Corrections
The uproarious fifth and final Jack Flippo adventure, a “hard-boiled novel at its grittiest and most unsentimental.” Booklist
A lawyer arrested in a small town for his part in a drug deal gone horribly, violently wrong asks his old buddy Jack to clear his name. To do that, Jack will have to find his friend’s missing wife Angelique, who is lost at sea…and who had an affair with Jack years ago. And he’ll have to stay one step ahead of a shady DEA agent-turned-comedian, a relentless female reporter desperate for a big story, and a ruthless killer who is leaving a trail of corpses.
96 Tears
Jack Flippo is back for a third outrageously inventive adventure, “which will be good news to fans of the Dallas-based PI and all those who like their crime fiction slathered in broad comedy.” Publishers Weekly
Life is never easy for Jack. The struggling PI is hired by ex-stripper Sherri Plunkett, now a married millionairess, to protect her long-lost daughter Sandra, a lusty starlet with a hit TV show, from a stalker…at the same time that he’s being stalked by two revenge-driven killers himself.
Dreamboat
The second adventure in the acclaimed Jack Flippo series, a dazzling novel so “gruesomely funny, you don't so much follow the plot as trot alongside, giggling in horror, while it sniffs its way home.” New York Times
Disgraced ex-D.A.-turned-PI Jack Flippo is hired by an insurance company, on the hook for a $500,000 pay-out, to investigate the seemingly accidental drowning death of a sleazy, small-town nightclub owner before they write the check to his business partner. What should be a straight forward case takes some nasty, violent turns, pitting Jack against a corrupt Sheriff, a homicidal songwriter, and a greedy stripper.
Reviews For Big Town
An ebullient noir comedy. Elmore Leonard fans can rejoice in a newly minted storyteller whose moves are so sure that each new double-cross brings a smile of pure joy.”
A wonderfully offbeat story that’s darkly sinister, terrifically funny, and oddly touching
An absolute dazzler…Traditional in the sense that he reminds you of the very best (Dashiell Hammett in particular). But in every important respect, original, engaging funny and alert. This is the debut of a major talent.
Snappy dialogue, cold-hearted femme fatales, and moronic psychopaths. A cynical comedy in the noir tradition.
Big Town is written in a sort of contemporary Chandlerese and features some of the most bizarre characters seen in recent crime fiction.
