The Big Bitch: 1 (Jackson "Doc" Holiday Mystery) - Softcover

Lang, John Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1603813039 ISBN 13: 9781603813037

Publisher: Coffeetown Press, 2015

Synopsis

Private Eye Jackson “Doc” Holiday investigates fraud, a crime he knows intimately. He was once a respected and successful mortgage banker who laundered more than 100 million dollars in dirty money. Although never convicted, he has been blackballed from banking. After his drinking buddy, a Catholic priest named Jesus Cortez, is shot dead in the driveway of Doc’s Berkeley home, he sets out to find his killer. The case takes him in search of an old confederate in Portland, where he begins to suspect that the murder of Jesus is connected to a money laundering scheme suspiciously similar to Doc's own. As Doc delves in further, he crosses swords with a scheming matriarch, a bent cop, a femme fatale, and a master criminal. Whoever’s at the bottom of this business has already killed and is facing “The Big Bitch,” or life in prison. And they’re not afraid to kill again. Book 1 in the Jackson “Doc” Holiday Mystery series.

About this title

Review:

"John Patrick Lang's highly entertaining first book, The Big Bitch, is a tale of murder, kidnapping, even a mutilation, set in the East Bay. It is told in gritty turgid prose with the brutal immediacy of the first person point of view, but with a generous leavening of humor, especially the Chandlerian similes ('I'll beat on you like a rented mule.')."

--Armand Croft, author of The Andrew MacCrimmon novels

"A wild East Bay mystery that doesn't just show us the underbelly of the region, but the vitality of the diverse population, all through the eyes of a darkly whimsical sleuth."

--Nick Mamatas, author of Love Is The Law

"The Big Bitch is a very, very good read with the dialogue and description of an old school hard-boiled novel. Some characters could have walked in from the world of Joseph Wambaugh and some in from the world of Elmore Leonard but they all walk off the page. I haven't encountered a character as sophisticated, smart, savvy and with the skill for skullduggery like Doc Holiday for twenty years. In other words, not since Ross Thomas died."

--Eric Mortensen, poet and author of Green Beret Blues

About the Author:

By turns, John Patrick Lang has been a lit major, a submarine sailor, a country-western singer/songwriter and a mortgage banker specializing in community lending. A native of Portland, Oregon, he makes his home in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Big Bitch is his first novel. For more information, go to www.johnpatricklang.com.

About this edition

• Publisher: Coffeetown Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1603813039
• ISBN 13: 9781603813037
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 324