
The
crime highlight of the year
FIFTY
GRAND
Adrian McKinty
Maria Hernandez has
a score to settle, on behalf of a deadbeat dad killed in a hit-and-run in Colorado.
But Hernandez has some obstacles to overcome - not least getting out of Cuba.
Adrian
McKinty, author of the critically acclaimed and bestselling series 'The Dead Trilogy'
(Dead I May Well Be, The Dead Yard, The Bloomsday Dead) has set aside wise cracking,
womanising hero Michael Forsythe for a very different daredevil.
In
'Fifty Grand', the first of a new series epitomised by Adrian's Irish wit sizzling
under heavy doses of Cuban heat and a flickering glimpse of the American dream,
we meet Maria Hernandez. Brilliant, bitter and bent on vengeance, she is a Cuban
cop who believes in justice, or what counts for justice in the heat scorched streets
of Havana, amidst the palms and cabanas that shelter the corruption of a city
permanently on the boil.
Seguing back and forth between heat-soaked
Havana and the icy luxury of a mountainside ski resort in Colorado, 'Fifty Grand'
is an audacious thriller from an acknowledged talent - and an incendiary debut
for a new hero. Tough, gritty, fast paced, packed with sharp dialogue and blood
soaked clashes of rich and poor, north and south, crime and punishment and cause
and effect, 'Fifty Grand' is a worthy new venture for this "
friggin'
genius" (Ken Bruen).
Adrian McKinty was born and grew
up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland at the height of The Troubles. He studied
politics at Oxford University and after a failed legal career he moved to the
US in the early 1990s. He found work as a security guard, postman, construction
worker, barman, rugby coach and bookstore clerk before becoming a school teacher
in Denver. In early 2008, McKinty moved to Melbourne and is now working at Monash
University.
'Fifty Grand' is available now (RRP
$32.99).