Frontlist Feature: Blood Hina by Naomi Hirahara

Top Suspense member Naomi Hirahara won an Edgar for Best Paperback Original for Snakeskin Shamisen, the third novel in her “reluctant” detective Mas Arai series, but that honor is only one of many in her literary career, which you can read more about here. The fourth entry in her series, BLOOD HINA, has just been released as a trade paperback and ebook. 

Here’s the description: 

Mas Arai’s best friend Haruo is getting married, and he has grudgingly agreed to serve as best man. But when an ancient Japanese doll display of Haruo’s fiancée goes missing, the wedding is called off with fingers pointed at Haruo. To solve the mystery to save Haruo’s life, Mas must untangle a web of secrecy, heart-breaking memories, and murder.

Naomi wrote the book, she says, because she “wanted to explore a number of topics.  The most important one was love for the widowed and divorced in their twilight years.  What does love the second time around look like in the circle of my older, crotchety Japanese gardener?  In terms of setting, I wanted to take full advantage of a nonfiction book I had written on the history of the Southern California Flower Market in downtown Los Angeles.  What I discovered was a tight-knit, nocturnal community that sold flowers underground while the rest of the world was sleeping.  The contrast between the fragrant smell of the flowers versus the realities of industrial downtown L.A. is striking and rife with stories, especially crime-based ones.  Last of all, I wanted to explore how people struggle with their addictions – gambling, substance abuse, and so on.  This is such a reality for people of all walks of life, including those in Mas Arai’s world.”

Those goals have clearly resonated in BLOOD HINA, as praise continues to pour in from review magazines as well as authors who know the Asian community in the U.S.

“Edgar-winner Hirahara once again provides a sensitive insider’s view of the Japanese- American subculture in her fourth Mas Arai mystery.”—Publishers Weekly


“Written with heart and depth, and starring an Everyman for our time.” —Kirkus Reviews


“Mas Arai is a true original and one of my favorite characters in crime fiction. I love spending time in his world and I’m thrilled that he’s back—and at the top of his grumpy game.” —S.J. Rozan, Edgar-winning author of The Shanghai Moon


"Naomi Hirahara has done it again! It's wonderful to see reluctant detective Mas Arai back in action." —Lisa See, New York Times bestselling author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Naomi is one of the West Coast's most respected authors, and hers is a series you don’t want to miss. You can find BLOOD HINA at Amazon, Nook, and Kobo.

FRONTLIST FEATURES: Hungry 4: Rise of the Triad by Harry Shannon & Steven Booth

Best-selling Top Suspense member Harry Shannon is one of the most versatile member of our group. He writes horror (i.e. Zombie), sci-fi, dystopian, and mystery fiction. Plus, he’s a well-known musician (and his teen daughter Paige is already taking after her father). So when Harry has a new book out, it’s a reason to celebrate.

Harry’s newest is TheHungry 4: Rise of the Triad. It’s part of the Sheriff Penny Miller Series, but it’s also a new twist for Penny and Harry. Here’s the description:

Small town Sheriff Penny Miller and her outlaw friend Scratch somehow managed to survive a nuclear blast in Nevada and then a brutal attack on their peaceful lodge in Colorado. They head for Los Angeles, looking for a fresh start. The citizens of Southern California remain blissfully ignorant of the coming war. They believe the zombies are simply an urban legend.

When they find themselves in a suspiciously run Malibu rehab facility, Miller can't relax. She knows the gore is about to hit the fan. Miller can sense when zombies are near. And they’re almost always near.

When all hell breaks loose, Miller and Scratch must endure deadly experiments, resist an ongoing government conspiracy, and battle another horde of ravenous zombies.

And that’s just for starters.

The Hungry series began with a short story called Jailbreak, Harry says, which was created for a charity anthology about zombies. “I asked Steven W. Booth, who was just beginning to write, if he wanted to collaborate. The story went up free on Amazon and got downloaded tens of thousands of times, so we wrote a novel called The Hungry. Best selling zombie author Joe McKinney contributed the introduction. Those sales were also great and launched an entire series. Sheriff Penny Miller of Flat Rock, Nevada is one hell of a lot of fun to write. She has a sailor's mouth, but a heart of solid gold. Her novels feature lots of black humor, action and gore. Collaborating at this length is rather new to me, but I really enjoy it, so The Hungry 5 is already in the works, You don't have to read these in order, by the way, but it helps.”

Rise of the Triad is already getting fabulous reviews, including these from prominent reviewers and authors:

"Zombie thrillers loaded with sexiness and smarts." -Jonathan Maberry, NYT Best Selling Author of Extinction Machine

"Like getting a bag of Halloween candy after a six month fast." -Frank Errington, Horrible Book Reviews

"Not just wall to wall action, but balls to the wall intense." -Steve Hockensmith, author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

"I loved it from the first line." -Joe McKinney, author of Dead Cit

The Top Suspense Group is proud to count Harry Shannon as one of our members. You definitely need to check out The Hungry 4.

FRONTLIST FEATURES: What Doesn't Kill Her by Max Allan Collins

Of all the members of Top Suspense, Max Allan Collins has to be the most prolific. (Just take a look at this). He’s ALWAYS got a new book coming out— frankly, the rest of us envy his productivity, but that’s another story.  So it’s not surprising that Max has a new novel coming out September 17.

WHAT DOESN’T KILL HER tells the story of Jordan Rivera, who was an ordinary kid with an ordinary family – until a vicious killer took it all away from her, sparing her and leaving her broken. The murders destroyed something inside Jordan and she spent ten long, silent years in an institution. Catching a glimpse of a news report about another ordinary family slain, Jordan breaks her silence. Now she’s out, and she molds herself—body and mind—into an instrument of justice.  While a young detective pursues the case on his own, Jordan teams up with members of her Victims Support Group, people like her, damaged by violent crime. They have their own stories of pain, heartache, and vengeance denied. With their help, Jordan will track down the killer before he can ravage any more lives. Her own life depends on it.

When we asked Max why this story, here’s what he said: “For my first novel with Thomas & Mercer, I wanted to step away from the historical and private eye genres I’m best known for, and do a straight thriller. I also wanted to get away from the procedural nature of the CSI, CRIMINAL MINDS and BONES novels that Matt Clemens and I have done featuring super-star forensics teams, including our own J.C. Harrow novels. The notion fascinated me of real people, members of a Victims of Violent Crimes support group, teaming up to use their own various everyday skills to track down a killer. Also, I’d been toying with doing an American variation on the strong damaged female protagonist of GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, and this seemed a perfect opportunity.”

Reviewers agree.

"What Doesn't Kill Her is a kick-ass thrill ride from page one. This is the American answer to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." – John Gilstrap, author of High Treason and Damage Control

 “Another winner from a fine writer.”  Not the Baseball Pitcher

"Collins weaves a compelling story with strong characters: Jordan, several members of her victims support group, and Mark Pryor, a high school crush recently made detective who pursues the case on his own time. Jordan is torn between her desire to destroy the killer on her own and identifying with the other victims, accepting their help. There are lots of interesting twists to keep the story moving briskly." Karen Musser Nortman"

You can find WHAT DOESN’T KILL HER at Amazon in ebook and print. Audio too. And while you’re at it, check out a couple of other works in the pipeline: EARLY CRIMES (Perfect Crime), which collects three early pieces by Max -- a short story, a novella, and a previously unpublished novel. And ASK NOT, a new Nate Heller thriller, the third in his JFK trilogy, will be out in October. It deals with the statistics-defying number of witness deaths that followed the assassination.

See? Prolific. And Amazing. 

INSIDE TOP SUSPENSE: Your Favorite Character

Welcome back, everyone. This week on INSIDE TOP SUSPENSE we’re talking about our Favorite Characters from a suspense, thriller, mystery, or horror novel. (Excluding our own.) Who’s yours? Why? What makes them so memorable? Hope you’ll join the conversation.

Harry Shannon starts us off:

I'm a fan of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee, John Connelly's Charlie Parker, Michael Connolly's Harry Bosch and several other series characters...But if I had to choose one favorite suspense hero, I guess it would have to be James Lee Burke's immortal Dave Robicheaux. From Black Cherry Blues and The Neon Rain all the way through to The Glass Rainbow, the series has held up beautifully. Robicheaux has lost a wife and numerous friends and lovers, been shot and stabbed and beaten and abandoned, gotten drunk and gotten sober. Through it all he's struggled to be dignified and compassionate, generally under the worst of circumstances. Hell, his wounded companion Clete Purcell is like another old friend, almost as real to me as the worn face in my bathroom mirror. As for Dave, he has become an old man now, one who still battles a horrendous temper, the urge to drink, and a wonderfully wrought, self destructive, deeply existential angst. He is an archetype and a contradiction in terms, a character who gives life to the phrase "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for a good man to do nothing."

Libby Hellmann says:

I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with my favorite characters. As Harry said, there are so many memorable ones. Steve Hamilton’s THE LOCK ARTIST turned the genre upside-down with his young, mute lock-picker, Michael. And I confess to a fondness for Bob Crais’ Joe Pike as well as Ree Dolly in Daniel Woodrell’s WINTER'S BONE. All of them are people of few words (Hmm, maybe there’s a pattern here?) but a strong sense of justice and loyalty.

But I keep coming back to two characters, both of whom I never tire: Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski and Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon. V.I. is the kind of person I want next to me in a fight. If we don’t win, we’ll have given it all we had. She can’t suffer injustice without needing to do something about it, and yet she’s savvy and experienced enough to pick her battles wisely. I trust her implicitly, knowing she’ll always have the right motivation for her actions. Gabriel Allon is more of an enigma. He has baggage, some of which we still don’t know, but that only adds to his allure. His skill set as an assassin is unparalleled, and yet he’d rather be an artist. The combination of brutal cunning and sensitivity is incredibly appealing.

Bill Crider adds: My favorite thriller character is any first-person narrator in an Alistair MacLean novel published before 1970. You might be thinking that’s a lot of different characters since MacLean didn’t write a series, but they way I see it, all his first-person narrators are the same guy, no matter when or where they might be. He (or they) is tougher than industrial leather, resourceful, able to go without sleep for days under conditions that would kill most people, and prone to make terrible blunders that get people killed. That last one might not seem very heroic, but anybody else in a similar situation would get hundreds more killed. If not thousands. He’s often handicapped by some injury or wound, he’s clever, and (this is important for a first-person narrator) he knows how to conceal important information from the reader without cheating too much. I read many of MacLean’s books well over 40 years ago. They thrilled me then, and they thrill me now, thanks to thanks to that wonderful character.

Dave Zeltseman says: "There are so many good choices for best thriller character, but I'm going with Hammett's Continental Op from Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, and 24 short stories. Hammett's nameless PI is tough, smart, resourceful, and also persistent as all hell. He might take a beating or two, but he's going to get his man (or dame) even if he's got to steal crutches from a cripple to do so!"

Lee Goldberg says: I can’t pick a favorite…but I can give you some favorites… Robert B. Parker’s Spenser (the early books, not the last 378 of’em), Richard S. Prather’s Shell Scott, Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, Gregory McDonald’s Fletch, and Charles Willeford’s Hoke Moseley. What makes these characters so terrific is that that they all have distinct voices and attitudes, strong and often brilliantly flawed personalities that totally shape the stories that are being told, and how they are told, whether it’s in first person or third person. It’s their voices, as much as their characters, that stick with me. I may forget the mysteries, but I can’t forget these characters.

And now, Max Allan Collins: It may be cheating a little, since I am working with the Spillane estate to complete various novels from the late writer's files, but...Mike Hammer is by far my favorite of the thriller heroes. The toughest of all P.I.s, Hammer was a post-war sensation who established a new threshold of violent response -- and sexual responsiveness -- for fictional protagonists. His vengeance-prone ways inspired every tough private eye and rogue cop who followed, as did his active libido, and it's no wonder that James Bond was first marketed in the USA as the 'British Mike Hammer.' But it's not just Bond, it's everybody from Peter Gunn to Dirty Harry, from Shaft to Jack Bauer.

Ed Gorman also weighs in: I'm going to disappoint a lot of people by saying that my favorite thriller protagonist is Lew Archer. There's dumb tough and there's smart tough and Archer is of the latter variety. And by tough I also mean perceptive and obstinate in pursuit of the truth. He found real tragedy in the everyday and wrote as well about the poor as the rich. I prefer the early novels (before the 1970s) because there's more action and less NYC-crowd pleasing (all the critical praise seemed to soften the books). I don't believe any writer has challenged him as the great psychologist of my era or as a storyteller who came closest to equaling the fine psychological novels of Simenon. If, as his critics insisted, he wrote the same book over and over again, it's a book I never tire of reading."