Shadow of a Thief by Norman Green

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Norman Green will be awarding an e-copy of Sick Like That & The Last Gig by Norman Green to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Combining his pitch perfect voice for the characters who live in New York's underbelly with a compelling new protagonist, Norm Green’s Shadow of a Thief grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go

In a previous life, Saul Fowler was a thief-for-hire with an impressive client list, including the US government. When he seeks shelter from his addictions up on the coast of Maine, his past come back to haunt him in the form of his estranged stepfather, Reverend McClendon. “Someone killed my daughter,” says the rev. “Find out who did it Saul, I know you can help me. Please?” None of this would be Saul's problem, except that the girl might be his half-sister.

Back in NYC, a place he never thought he’d see again, Saul delves deep under the surface of the dead girl’s life. Before long he finds himself contending with gangs, pimps, prostitutes, the NYPD, and just maybe, the fifth fundamental universal force. Finding the truth will either change his life forever, or end it.

Gritty and unputdownable, this is perfect for fans of James Lee Burke and Robert Crais.

Read an excerpt:

Money changed hands.

Aniri counted out twenty crisp Ben Franklins. Corey tried not to think about how much Aniri paid and in what currency in order to earn each of those bills. There was another murmured conversation, and then Aniri removed her watch and handed it to the woman before turning to Corey. “Give me your watch, baby. And your cell. We can’t take anything mechanical out there with us.”

“Out where?” Corey handed her his watch and fished around in his coat pocket for his phone. He preferred to keep it clipped to his belt but Aniri would yell at him and call him a nerd when he did that.

“Shh. This is an earth ceremony.”

“Oh great, an earth ceremony. Does that mean like the alleyway out back?”

“Coreeee... Please?”

He didn’t know if she knew it but he was powerless over her, he would do anything to get her to love him back. The woman behind the counter took the phone and the watches, put them in an old cigar box and stuck the box up on the shelf, next to the skull. “Please wait here,” she said softly. She opened a door behind the counter and went out.. Corey looked at Aniri as the door closed. “Life with you,” he said, “is many things, but never dull.”

She locked her pale brown eyes on his. “Some day in South Carolina,” she said, “what a great story this will be.”

“Right now,” he told her, “I can’t even picture what South Carolina looks like.”

About the Author: Norman Green reports this about himself: "I have always been careful, as Mark Twain advised, not to let schooling interfere with my education. Too careful, maybe. I have been, at various times, a truck driver, a construction worker, a project engineer, a factory rep, and a plant engineer, but never, until now, a writer." He lives in Emerson, New Jersey, with his wife, and is hard at work on his second novel.

http://normgreenwriter.com

Buy the book at HarperCollins.

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Sick Like That by Norman Green

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Norman will be awarding an digital copy of Sick Like That to 3 randomly drawn winners via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Why do you write in your genre? What draws you to it?

I write crime fiction because it’s what I generally enjoy reading the most. I like characters who break the rules, who draw their own lines, for their own reasons.

What research (or world-building is required?

Your life experience is your research, really.

Name one thing you learned from your hero/heroine.

It ain’t about how many times you get knocked down, it’s about how many times you get back up.
>br> Do you have any odd or interesting writing quirks, habits or superstitions?

Not really. Superstition is disordered thinking.

Are you a plotter or pantser?

I want to be a plotter, but I’m a pantser.

Look to your right – what’s sitting there?

‘The Essential Rumi,’ translated by Coleman Barks

Anything new coming up from you? What?

‘Shadow of a Thief,’ coming this fall, about a drug addict/thief who’s looking for his connection to the rest of us.

Do you have a question for our readers?

What keeps you up at night? What scares you? What do you wish you could do, right now?

PI Marty Stiles was shot and paralyzed and is now in rehab, trying to decide whether to fight to recover. Meanwhile, his agency is being run by two women: the street-smart and savvy Alessandra Martillo, who’s the muscle, and Sarah Waters, a naïve, single mom, new to the job but who quickly becomes the brains. Though the two women grew up only a few miles from each other in Brooklyn, it might as well have been worlds apart. Now they’re partners, and for all their differences, are committed to their joint venture. When Sarah’s deadbeat ex-husband gets into trouble, Al would rather let him suffer, but she agrees to help Sarah figure out where he is and why another man has ended up dead.

This follow-up to The Last Gig features a tough and edgy, one-of-a-kind heroine—an entirely fresh take on the hardboiled women private investigators who dominate so many crime fiction classics.

Read an Excerpt:

Sarah Waters climbed the subway steps out onto the street and headed for home. She lived in the basement of her mother’s house in Bensonhurst, a largely Italian neighborhood down on the southern end of Brooklyn. She always found herself dragging when she got this close, the four blocks from the train station to the house always seemed the hardest part of the trip. You’re always so happy to get out of there in the morning, she told herself, and so bummed when you have to come back. Is the basement really that bad? But it wasn’t her mother’s basement she minded, not really, it was her mother, right upstairs, and all too often, downstairs and in her face. “Frank is a good man.” Her mother never got tired of saying it. “I don’t know why you two couldn’t work things out. Your father and I had our differences . . .”

Last night Sarah had finally had enough. “Frankie is only good for one thing, Ma.” She slapped her left hand into the crook of her right arm and pumped her right fist.

“AAAAGH!” Her mother squeezed her eyes shut and crossed herself. “Don’t talk like that in my house!”

“It’s the truth, Ma.” She glanced over her shoulder, but her son, Frankie Junior, was in his room with the door closed.

She could just hear the sounds of his television. “Frankie could be fun sometimes, but you can only be doing that for about an hour a day, am I right? What am I supposed to do with him the rest of the time? When you have a family, you’re supposed to grow up, bring home a paycheck, you’re supposed to quit hanging out in the bar drinking beers and chasing the waitresses. Besides, he’s outa work two years now. I get back together with him, you’re gonna have him in your basement, too. You want that? He’s like a stray cat, you give him food, a soft bed, and a nice place to shit, you’ll never get rid of him.”

“Would that be so bad? Your father and I . . .”
>br> “I don’t wanna hear it.” You can eat shit for forty years if that’s what you want, but not me . . . But she couldn’t tell her mother that, since his death her father had completely reformed his character and was now a saint.

About the Author: Norman Green is the author of six crime novels, most recently Sick Like That. Born in Massachusetts, he now lives in New Jersey with his wife.

Website: www.normgreenwriter.com

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