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SHORTS
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"Hungarian Lessons": Olen Steinhauer finds himself in serious trouble again, this time in Budapest. Sex and politics, cocaine and a big frame-up make him, momentarily, "more famous than Dan Brown--in Hungary."
From Expletive Deleted, edited by Jen Jordan. "In this gritty, gorgeous collection of short stories, new and veteran crime writers alike celebrate that granddaddy of all cusswords; that most adaptable and descriptive grouping of letters; that searing, offensive, musical, perfect sound: fuck."
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"The Piss-Stained Czech": In the mid-nineties in Prague, a Joyce-obsessed, budding writer named Olen Steinhauer is drinking himself into inaction, when his friend, Toman, invites him to Dublin. The real estate business turns deadly for members of the New Europe. A cameo by Bruen's Jack Taylor.
From Dublin Noir, edited by Ken Bruen and featuring a wonderful cross-section of today's best crime writers.
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A short story from my graduate school years, about the desperate lengths a man goes to when his marriage has reached its end. |
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The life of the expatriate has a different flavor than life at home, and truths are harder to grasp hold of in a different country. What we take for granted at home becomes something different when we're faced with cultures that see things differently, and as a result we become different. |
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READING GROUP GUIDE (pdf)
(to the first 3 books in the series)
Scroll down for Amazon Shorts.
This series of novels chronicles the exploits of members of the People's Militia in an unnamed Eastern European country during the 50-year length of the Cold War.
Beginning in 1948 with Emil Brod, The Bridge of Sighs looks at the aftermath of war and the introduction of Soviet rule.
While a dramatic uprising against Soviet occupation goes on in neighboring Hungary in 1956, The Confession tells its story: Ferenc Kolyeszar, a homicide inspector and one-time novelist, is faced with the double-threat of a murderer in the world of communist art, and the dissolution of his marriage.
In 1966-67, Brano Sev, member of the feared and hated Ministry for State Security, is sent to his hometown of Bobrka to investigate the surprise reappearance of a man who fled to the West. His job takes him from the security of 36 Yalta Boulevard, State Security headquarters, all the way to Vienna, where the puzzle-pieces of conspiracy finally come together.
Liberation Movements represents a shift in the series, following multiple characters and fractured timelines in a minimalist form. It's 1975, and Militia officer Libarid Terzian is flying to Istanbul. A group of Armenian terrorists take over the plane, but before their demands can be discussed, the plane explodes. Why? Brano Sev, with the help of younger agents Gavra Noukas and Katja Drdova, unravel the mystery, each character experiencing his own mo liberation.
Victory Square, 1989. The society just finding its legs in 1948 is now in tatters, just barely holding on, and then it isn't. Revolution breaks out in the streets as Emil Brod, now a militia chief on the cusp of retirement, learns how his personal choices of forty years ago still reverberate in the present. In the end it brings him, full circle, but changed. Emil Brod of 1989 finds solace in murder--the very thing he's spent his entire life fighting.
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