Posts Tagged: Hardman

Brash News: All Kinds of Praise

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We have a bunch of hot new releases, scores of great reviews, and a lot of breaking news this month... so here we go. ALL KINDS OF PRAISE Our discovery and publication this month of Ralph Dennis' lost manuscript ALL KINDS OF UGLY is big news in the publishing industry, making headlines in this week's issue of Publishers Weekly, who reported that "the story behind the discovery of the manuscript by Brash copublisher Lee Goldberg could have been lifted from the pages of a detective novel...." You can read all about it here. The critics at Publishers Weekly also loved ALL KINDS OF UGLY, saying in their review that Ralph's "strong prose and well-paced storytelling place him alongside... more

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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 TALENT FOR KILLING

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For decades, collectors have searched for copies of Ralph Dennis' paperback original DEADMAN'S GAME. It was the most difficult of Ralph's titles to find...and rumors of an unpublished sequel became something of an urban legend.   Now DEADMAN'S GAME is back ... and paired with the long-lost unpublished sequel...to create a new novel, A TALENT FOR KILLING, which is now available for pre-order in paperback and ebook editions (for release on Sept 2, 2019).   Ralph is, of course, is best known for his legendary Hardman series of twelve crime novels, which were published in mid-to-late 1970s. But seven books into Hardman, Ralph walked away from the series to try... 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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