Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Label: St. Martin's Minotaur
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Minotaur
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: June 30, 2001
Publishing house: St. Martin's Minotaur
Sale Popularity Level: 1675780
Studio: St. Martin's Minotaur
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Product Description:
Sometimes revenge is best paid in cold steel.
HARDCASE
Joe Kurtz has been wronged one too many times. So when he takes out the drug-dealing thug who killed his girlfriend, the ex-PI gets to cool his heels for 11 years in Attica. It's there that he meets 'Little Skag' Farino, the son of an aging Buffalo, New York, mob boss. In exchange for protecting the kid's manhood against any unwanted jailhouse affection, Kurtz gets an audience with Little Skag's father upon his release from prison.
Semi-retired Don Byron Farino is still clinging to what dwindling power he holds on the New York organized crime scene. He enlists Kurtz's help to track down the Family's missing accountant--a man with too much knowledge of Family business to have on the loose. But someone doesn't want the accountant found. As the story twists and turns and the body count rises, Kurtz no longer knows whom he can trust. Everyone seems to be after something, from the mob boss's sultry yet dangerous daughter, to a hit man named The Dane, an albino killer who is good with a knife, and a dwarf who is armed to the teeth and hell-bent on revenge.
Bestselling author Dan Simmons expertly builds the tension as he springs one surprise after another, all the while daring the reader to take a ride with Kurtz through the cold, windy streets of Buffalo where one wrong move could mean a belly-full of lead.
Amazon.com Review:
Penzler Pick, July 2001: Dan Simmons is not an author who writes the same book twice. He doesn't even come close. Since switching from fantasy/horror to mystery, Simmons has written Crook Factory, set in Cuba and starring Ernest Hemingway, and Darwin's Blade, featuring a genius insurance claims investigator who only has to look at a demolished vehicle to be able to know exactly what led up to the crash.
With Hardcase, Simmons both pays homage to over-the-top pulp fiction and writes a remarkably good example of it. Joe Kurtz has no intention of giving up his chosen profession of private investigator, even though he's just spent 12 years in jail. He believes it's only a matter of finding the right case. But that case will never come to him, so he pays a call on Byron Tatick Farino, mob boss, and suggests that for $400 a day plus expenses, he'll try to find the Family's missing accountant and also figure out who's hijacking the Family's trucks. Farino is inclined to let him do this since he has nothing to lose, and Joe did save his son from a fate worse than death in Cell Block D.
So Joe is off and running, and after picking up his ex-assistant, Arlene, he opens an office in the basement of a porn store and begins looking into the Mob's business. He no sooner interviews the accountant's wife than she is found dead and horribly mutilated.
The list of those who want Joe to butt out is long, and they are evidently very serious about preventing Joe from finding out too much. There's the person who is hijacking the trucks, and wants to continue. There's also a couple of sociopaths (if not psychopaths) named Malcolm and Cutter who work for the Mob's lawyer. Unsurprisingly, they are not exactly loyal and know that there's a $10,000 reward for the guy who wasted Ali, one of the Death Mosque brothers in Cell Block D. Finally, there are the Levine brothers, Manny and Sammy. Joe hasn't heard of either of them, but word is that Manny blames Joe for Sammy's death.
These numerous and varied storylines remain remarkably lucid as Simmons treats us to a fast-paced thriller with excitement on every page. --Otto Penzler
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Rated by buyers 
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Hard Case is dedicated to the legendary Richard Stark although it owes more to Philip Marlowe and The Continental Op than it does to the remorseless Parker. At very first I thought this was a subtle parody of the form but that is because Simmons is such a fine writer. He has written novels in almost every genre. In this case he takes the themes of noir novels and works them into a story which is genuinely exciting, with a dry humour that makes the violence acceptable.
Rated by buyers -
This is overall some of the best writing I've seen since McDonald's Travis Magee series. It is deceptively simple and direct but the main charecter is unforgetable. We also have some fully developed unique badguys.
Rated by buyers 
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Dan Simmons writes Science Fiction (he won the Hugo award for Hyperion in 1989). Dan Simmons writes Horror (Bram Stoker Award, Carrion Comfort). Dan Simmons writes Fantast (World Fantasy Award, Song of Kali). And Mr. Simmons writes detective fiction.
These different genres mostly have different writing styles. Instead of trying to force one type of writing into another genre, Mr. Simmons changes his colors, adjusts his pacing, wording and style for the hard-core nasty world of private investigation.
Hardcase is the very first of three (and we hope more) Joe Kurtz novels. Hard Freeze (A Joe Kurtz Novel) and Hard as Nails (A Joe Kurtz Novel) are the other two. Joe Kurtz isn't mean and nasty, but he also has no compunction about sticking a man's hand in a disposal or running over an unconscious man's legs. Kurtz has his own code. Getting out of jail after following that code, Kurtz throws himself in the middle of a Mafia mess that he learned about in prison, and starts churning up the mob and old acquaintances.
The pacing of this novel is well done, the dialogue believable. The plot integrates several subplots well, although some of the plot twists are tipped off early (ain't this called foreshadowing?).
I also liked how Mr. Simmons slides in a reference to one of his other books, The Crook Factory, about a spyring in Cuba run by Hemingway (see page 221 in the paperback for the reference).
Language and graphic violence make this an unsuitable read for kids. Everyone else will enjoy it.
Rated by buyers -
Okay so I am a fan of the Joe Kurtz books, I wish more than three where written. Solid writting, good depth of people that make this book so great.
Rated by buyers -
Hardcase by Dan Simmons could be thought of as hardboiled crime fiction on steroids. The action is not merely violent, it is brutal with a take no prisoners attitude.
Former PI Joe Kurtz has just been paroled from Attica after a rather long stay. His very first act as a free man is to hire himself out as a stalking horse for the head of a western New York crime family whose fortunes are quickly dwindling. This is a novel with a very fast paced, action packed narrative. The body count mounts up at a dizzyingly accelerated rate, with no shortage of new and improved ways of dispatching the ever shrinking cast.
Does Hardcase qualify as great literature? No. The plotting, though not without some unexpected twists, is contrived and not believable. The characters are generally over-the-top stereotypes who lack nuance. Still, for what it is, Hardcase is very competently written. If you like action-adventure laced with graphic violence, you could do considerably worse than this book.
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