Buenos Aires is like that drop-dead beautiful woman (or man) you knew who had that troubled history and a dark side you just couldn’t escape. I’d been going to B.A. since 1986 and really wanted to write a book that captured my sense of the place. The research was pretty mind-blowing (imagine dropping in on a foreign city to research the subjects of corrupt cops and petty criminals) and I wrote 17 Stone Angels very quickly, with the idea of writing a detective thriller. In typical fashion, everything became completely inverted, with the corrupt police chief “hero” trying to create an ever larger circle of lies, instead of trying to uncover some deeper truth. Sometimes, though, the truth is something you can’t turn away from.
In January of 2004, 17 Stone Angels was published in the UK by Orion Publishers under the title, The Stone Angels. It was followed by the French translation, Les Anges des Pierre, from Pygmalion, in Paris, and will soon come out in Holland and Russia. The book was optioned by Paramount Studios for Cruise/Wagner, and I’ve heard 3rd-hand that pre-production of a movie may begin as soon as this April, but at this point it’s still in the pleasant fantasy phase. Of course, a writer should never discount the value of a pleasant fantasy.
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Comisario Miguel Fortunato is a recent widower near retirement after a long career with the Buenos Aires police department. Six months ago he was ordered to kidnap foreigner Robert Waterbury for reasons never made clear to him. The kidnapping turned to murder. Now, the Americans are sending their own investigator to Argentina and Fortunato is assigned to assist and support her. When he meets the young, inexperienced Athena Fowler, fresh from university, he realizes that the Americans are not eager to solve the crime either.
Gradually, he pieces together the story that ended with the short, harsh finale of Robert Waterbury, a failed novelist who had come to Argentina in a desperate attempt to make a big score. Was Waterbury a blackmailer, a fraud? Or was he about to turn his career around?
Surrounded by a cast of tango-dancers, torturers, burnt-out revolutionaries and global bankers, Athena and Fortunato begin to discover crime on a level so grand it can only be called business. As the hunt for the killer intensifies, Fortunato begins to unravel not only the murder he was at the centre of, but the deeper mystery of his own career and the lies that have sustained it.
The Stone Angels is a brilliant crime novel reminiscent of the work of James Ellroy, offering a rare, authentic glimpse into a dangerous and beautiful city, and its world of illusion.
We are offering both the hardcover British First Edition for $25.00 and the mass-market paperback for $13.50.
To order the hardback, click here.
To order the paperback, click here.
. . . a powerful, disquieting novel . . .
– The London Daily Telegraph
. . . a tour-de-force of narrative precision and psychological acuity . . .
– Crime Time (London)
. . . Part thriller, part insight into the underbelly of Buenos Aires . . .
[a] dark and moody thriller."
– Irish Examiner
. . . a witty, sleazy thriller that never loses its intelligence.
– The Independent (London) "50 Best Books to bring to the Beach"
. . . graceful, mesmerising, witty tango of a crime novel.
– New Zealand Herald
. . . perceptive and dark . . .
– Sydney Morning Herald
Invisible World is as much a concept as it is a store. The novelistic version was published in the United States by HarperCollins/Reganbooks in 1998, and shortly thereafter in translation in Germany, Holland, France, Japan and the Czech Republic and in the United Kingdom. It was recently optioned for a movie. This is a signed, mint First Edition of the American version of the book.
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A phone call from South America and a one-way ticket to Shanghai form the first threads of the mysterious and magical textile that is being woven around plumber Andrew Mann. Twenty years ago Andy's boyhood companion Clayton Smith broke away from their prosaic existence and became a wildly successful artist in Tokyo. Now Clayton's irresistible invitation to his own funeral in Hong Kong gives Andy one last chance to close the book on their unruly friendship.
Or so he thinks. He soon steps into Clayton's world, a domain of artists, smugglers and seductive strangers, where the rare beauty of priceless ancient textiles is matched by the obsessions of the people who collect them. Andy unwittingly becomes enmeshed in Clayton's search for a stunning Mongol tapestry: a map of the Invisible World. From Hong Kong to Shanghai and into the awe-inspiring vastness of Inner Mongolia, Andy chases the phantasm of his friend's last bequest. As the lines between the material world and the invisible one begin to disappear, Andy finds himself on a journey in which the stakes are high and the only thing that sees 20/20 is the imagination.
We have a few of the hardcover U.S. First Edition books available for $25.00, which are autographed.
To order the hardback, click here.
"Top-quality debut suspense novel that crossbreeds The Third Man with The Maltese Falcon and comes up
a whopping winner . . . Masterpiece."
– Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"An intriguing mixture of adventure story and philosophical conundrum. Ingenious, atmospheric and
unsettling."
– The Times of London
"A subtle, suspensful experience . . . Here is a thinking person's thriller, brimming with ideas and a most
appropriate complexity.
– The San Francisco Chronicle
