The real estate mogul is lying about something, but his wife really was raped twenty-years ago in an unsolved assault. Now she's long dead by her own hand, the case has gone cold, and the mogul starts dropping cash into former Saint Ansgar homicide detective turned private eye Richard Dean Buckner's wallet to find some answers.
Just hours later Buckner's old homicide partner calls up. His grandmother was just killed in a drive-by that hit the wrong address. People that stupid need to be taught harsh lessons, and vengeance just so happens to be one of Buckner's finer skills.
Everything circles the drain as Buckner finds himself at war with the worst gang the city has to offer as well as the slithering rapist who has resurfaced just to tie the loose ends from the twenty year-old crime. Buckner doesn't back down, and if that means getting himself carjacked so he can interrogate the gang bangers, pose as the mogul's secret lover and chase the rapist into a women's shower room so he can beat him mercilessly, so be it. Just another day.
***Praise for Warpath***
"When so many PI novels are all about pretty form, damned few writers get the gritty function of real PI novels. Chandler, Hammett, Crais, Crumley. Those guys are the shit. So is Sayles. Warpath immerses you in his world, shows you what you'd rather not see, makes you hear his music his way. When Bruckner bleeds, we do, too. But it's not just pretty red, it means something, we learn from it. Read him...period. Incidentally, Sayles tells us that music sounds like a drillbit up someone's ass. Come on...how can you not read that?"
- Trey R. Barker, author of Death is Forever and Slow Bleed
"Buckner's back. More bloody, more bawdy, more biting ...and more brutal. Sayles' wise-cracking, sardonic detective takes you along in the front seat for a ride on noir's wild side. Funny, dark and twisted. Warpath chafes against the cookie-cutter mysteries of yesteryear and serves up crime like no other. Not since Philip K. Dick has a writer created a narcotic so insidious as the Big Fry."
- Tom Pitts, author of Knuckball and Hustle
"William James first defined the literary technique of stream-of-consciousness and then William Faulkner and James Jones employed it for powerful and uber-original effects, becoming the best-known practitioners of the technique until Gordon Lish came along and edged it further along in its evolution. Now, Ryan Sayles has taken hold of it and pushed it along even further on its evolutionary journey with one of the wildest noir rides I've ever been privileged to read, his raw and elemental Warpath. Buckner isn't nuts or a psychopath; he's just tired of all the bullshit that goes on in the game between criminals and cops and intelligently, he simply takes the most logical course of action in eradicating the animals who dare to breathe in his world. That he's the baddest bad ass in the neighborhood doesn't hurt. This is a ground-breaking book in just about every sense of the word. Sayles is a mighty talent and we're lucky to have him."
- Les Edgerton, author of The Bitch, The Rapist, The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping and others
"Richard Dean Buckner is a tough ex-police detective turned tougher private eye with at least .44 reasons not to call him Dick. Ryan Sayles pulls out all the stops as he races his protagonist along a frantic and treacherous Warpath."
- J.L. Abramo, award-winning author of Gravesend
Genre: Mystery
Just hours later Buckner's old homicide partner calls up. His grandmother was just killed in a drive-by that hit the wrong address. People that stupid need to be taught harsh lessons, and vengeance just so happens to be one of Buckner's finer skills.
Everything circles the drain as Buckner finds himself at war with the worst gang the city has to offer as well as the slithering rapist who has resurfaced just to tie the loose ends from the twenty year-old crime. Buckner doesn't back down, and if that means getting himself carjacked so he can interrogate the gang bangers, pose as the mogul's secret lover and chase the rapist into a women's shower room so he can beat him mercilessly, so be it. Just another day.
***Praise for Warpath***
"When so many PI novels are all about pretty form, damned few writers get the gritty function of real PI novels. Chandler, Hammett, Crais, Crumley. Those guys are the shit. So is Sayles. Warpath immerses you in his world, shows you what you'd rather not see, makes you hear his music his way. When Bruckner bleeds, we do, too. But it's not just pretty red, it means something, we learn from it. Read him...period. Incidentally, Sayles tells us that music sounds like a drillbit up someone's ass. Come on...how can you not read that?"
- Trey R. Barker, author of Death is Forever and Slow Bleed
"Buckner's back. More bloody, more bawdy, more biting ...and more brutal. Sayles' wise-cracking, sardonic detective takes you along in the front seat for a ride on noir's wild side. Funny, dark and twisted. Warpath chafes against the cookie-cutter mysteries of yesteryear and serves up crime like no other. Not since Philip K. Dick has a writer created a narcotic so insidious as the Big Fry."
- Tom Pitts, author of Knuckball and Hustle
"William James first defined the literary technique of stream-of-consciousness and then William Faulkner and James Jones employed it for powerful and uber-original effects, becoming the best-known practitioners of the technique until Gordon Lish came along and edged it further along in its evolution. Now, Ryan Sayles has taken hold of it and pushed it along even further on its evolutionary journey with one of the wildest noir rides I've ever been privileged to read, his raw and elemental Warpath. Buckner isn't nuts or a psychopath; he's just tired of all the bullshit that goes on in the game between criminals and cops and intelligently, he simply takes the most logical course of action in eradicating the animals who dare to breathe in his world. That he's the baddest bad ass in the neighborhood doesn't hurt. This is a ground-breaking book in just about every sense of the word. Sayles is a mighty talent and we're lucky to have him."
- Les Edgerton, author of The Bitch, The Rapist, The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping and others
"Richard Dean Buckner is a tough ex-police detective turned tougher private eye with at least .44 reasons not to call him Dick. Ryan Sayles pulls out all the stops as he races his protagonist along a frantic and treacherous Warpath."
- J.L. Abramo, award-winning author of Gravesend
Genre: Mystery
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