Pimp for the Dead: 4 (Hardman) - Softcover

Dennis, Ralph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1732422605 ISBN 13: 9781732422605

Publisher: Brash Books, 2018

Synopsis

“Dennis wrote with assurance. His prose was muscular, swift, and highly readable.” Joe R. Lansdale, from his introduction

Jim Hardman was an Atlanta cop until he was wrongly accused of corruption and thrown off the force. Now he works as an unlicensed PI, trouble-shooter and bodyguard…often partnered with his drinking buddy Hump Evans, a black, ex-NFL player who supports his playboy lifestyle by working as hired muscle. A small-town farmer hires Hardman to find his teenage daughter who ran off to Atlanta to become a model…and ended up a hooker. It’s fast work for Hardman, but she’s gunned down minutes after he finds her. To hunt her killer, Hardman and Hump Evans take a deep dive into a bottomless cesspool of vice and greed that could drown them.

This new edition includes an introduction by Joe R. Lansdale, author of the Hap & Leonard novels, and an afterword by Paul Bishop, author and retired LAPD homicide detective.

Praise for the HARDMAN novels by Ralph Dennis:

"Ralph Dennis is an underappreciated master. His Hardman series is one of the finest in the P.I. genre." Robert Randisi, founder of the Private Eye Writers of America

“Among the best series books around.” Philadelphia Daily News

“Expert writing, plus good plotting and an unusual degree of sensitivity." New York Times

About this title

About the Author

Ralph Dennis isn’t a household name… but he should be. He is widely considered among crime writers as a master of the genre, denied the recognition he deserved because his twelve Hardmanbooks, which are beloved and highly sought-after collectables now, were poorly packaged in the 1970s by Popular Library as a cheap men’s action-adventure paperbacks with numbered titles. Even so, some top critics saw past the cheesy covers and noticed that he was producing work as good as John D. MacDonald, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, Dashiell Hammett, and Ross MacDonald. The New York Times praised the Hardman novels for “expert writing, plotting, and an unusual degree of sensitivity. Dennis has mastered the genre and supplied top entertainment.” The Philadelphia Daily News proclaimed Hardman“the best series around, but they’ve got such terrible covers…” Unfortunately, Popular Library didn’t take the hint and continued to present the series like hack work, dooming the novels to a short shelf-life and obscurity…except among generations of crime writers, like novelist Joe R. Lansdale (the Hap & Leonard series) and screenwriter Shane Black (the Lethal Weapon movies), who’ve kept Dennis’ legacy alive through word-of-mouth and by acknowledging his influence on their stellar work. Ralph Dennis wrote three other novels that were published outside of the Hardman series ―Atlanta, Deadman’s Game and MacTaggart’s War― but he wasn’t able to reach the wide audience, or gain the critical acclaim, that he deserved during his lifetime. He was born in 1931 in Sumter, South Carolina, and received a masters degree from University of North Carolina, where he later taught film and television writing after serving a stint in the Navy. At the time of his death in 1988, he was working at a bookstore in Atlanta and had a file cabinet full of unpublished novels. Brash Books will be releasing the entire Hardman series, his three other published novels, and his long-lost manuscripts.

Edition details

• Publisher: Brash Books
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1732422605
• ISBN 13: 9781732422605
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 196