‘Hard Man is an Edinburgh festival of lip-smacking gruesomeness and black comedy, where every light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.’ – Val McDermid
‘Scorched earth writing. A hurtling, high-wire ballet of hard-boiled violence . . . Riveting, nasty, dark, violent and utterly compelling. I couldn’t put it down.’ – Denise Hamilton, Edgar-nominated author of Prisoner of Memory
‘Blew me to hell and gone . . . line on line of wondrous expression . . . moved me in ways that hurt.’ – Ken Bruen
‘Guthrie writes with an urgency, energy, cynical realism and mastery of casual violence that is rarely encountered in British crime writing.’ – Marcel Berlins
‘Scotland’s leading hardboiled crime writer.’ – Scotland on Sunday
‘A real knuckleduster of a book.’ – Waterstone’s Books Quarterly
‘It really is a rare book that can make you wince both with pain and laughter. If there’s going to be a better crime novel in 2007, it’s one that will have to do a lot to beat Hard Man,’ - Shots Mag
Has Pearce finally found his match? A time-served Edinburgh hard man, Pearce is still recovering from the recent loss of his mother in a stabbing incident in a post office robbery. He’s invited by the dysfunctional Baxter family to protect their pregnant 16-year-old daughter from Wallace, her 26-year-old husband, a man with a penchant for killing family pets. Having found out that the baby’s not his, Wallace has sworn vengeance. Pearce declines the job: he’s no babysitter. But when Wallace kills Pearce’s dog, he goes too far. Now it’s personal. Time to find out who the real hard man is.
Allan Guthrie was born in Orkney and now lives in Edinburgh with his wife, Donna. He has published several short stories in a variety of magazines and anthologies. Allan is webmaster/editor of Noir Originals, commissioning editor for both Pulp Originals and PointBlank Press, and a literary agent. Visit his website at www.allanguthrie.co.uk.
Click here to view Allan’s Meet the Author interview!
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