I would like to welcome L.H. Thomson to The Avid Reader today. Thanks for stopping by L.H. Check out L.H.'s book Quinn Checks In and Guest Post on "Why I love writing". Thanks to Making Connections and L.H. Thomson for allowing me to be a part of this tour.
Book Title: Quinn Checks In
Author: L.H. Thomson
Series: Liam Quinn Mysteries
Genre: Hard-boiled mystery
Published: April 4th 2012
Publisher: J.I. Loome
Kindle Edition:
Pages: 200
PURCHASE
SYNOPSIS
QUINN CHECKS IN
Liam Quinn is back in his hometown Philly after three years in the pen for forgery. Now the ex-boxer, ex-art student has been given a chance to make amends by working as an insurance investigator, restoring a little of his family's pride and getting another chance at Nora Garcia de Soria, the woman of his dreams.
But a gallery heist isn't what it seems, and pretty soon, Quinn is running out of people to trust. The biggest mobster in town, a sweetheart named "Vin The Shin," is calling him out; a steady string of lowlifes want his head, and the local police think he's hiding something.
Hey, when trouble comes knocking?
That's when Quinn Checks In.
REVIEWS
QUINN CHECKS IN
Four Stars from #1 ranked, #1 followed Goodreads.com Reviewer Jennifer Hall, AKA Traveller:
“Here is a PI story that doesn't deal in death, that doesn't reflect just black-and-white, and that makes you wonder where the Quinn series is going to go. I for one, certainly plan to find out, and have booked a copy of the next Quinn already. Oh, and not to mention: there's a little dash of romance as well, that keeps you wondering about how it will develop as the series continues.
“Time will tell, but for now, I'm with Quinn.”
Five Stars from R.P. Dahlke, author of the popular Lalla Bains series:
“Liam dodges bullets, punches… okay, some not so much, mob-types, and all sorts of lovely women in this bright, witty and wonderfully complex first in the Liam Quinn mystery series.
“Highly recommended!”
Five Stars from Goodreads.com reviewer Beverly Ashauer:
“Throw in some fist fights, murders, family problems and a mom who wants him home every Sunday for dinner and you have a really great book. Oh, and I forgot about the girl he has loved forever, but can't get up the nerve to tell her. Quinn's life is quite an action-packed adventure. I will certainly read more books by this author and hope he has a long series with Liam Quinn as the main character!”
EXCERPT
QUINN CHECKS IN
MY FAMILY’S NEIGHBORHOOD is called Fishtown, and it’s about as glamorous as the name sounds.
The narrow old brick-and-wood buildings are attached, block on block, crammed together tight, tall and skinny, dark hues and wood shingle siding. Many of them are multi-family and still others – like my parents’ house – were just the most that young immigrant families could ever hope to afford back in the day. The streets between them are no wider than modern alleys, decades of beaten down, repaired and patched asphalt worn to a near-glassy smoothness in the occasional spot.
The neighborhood has been filled for years by the ranks of the blue-collar working man: firefighters, cops, dock workers, construction workers, garbage men, mailmen, teachers and transit drivers, all crammed in with their wives and husbands and kids and grandparents, like shoes stored in a box one size too small, then piled on top of one another in a corner cupboard.
Nearly everyone here is Irish, or Italian or Russian. But everyone displays their Star Spangled Banner in some prominent spot on their house and means it, too. Every person here, no matter how well off they’ve been, has a father or a grandfather who’s willing to smack them silly still, and sit them down and lecture them about life in the old country, and how good they’ve got it now.
In summer, when the mercury climbs high, the humidity swelters and the sidewalk feels like it might melt, the close quarters can boil over into trouble, with nowhere good for all of that pressure to go, long-time next-door neighbors coming to rapid blows in short, unsustainable explosions of passion.
But more usually, you see the best in people, a kind of hum of activity as they blow off that steam, of guys in football jerseys and long shorts swapping stories on the stoops while sharing a tall boy, and kids playing in the street, hanging around Central Pizza for a slice or a hoagie, maybe cooling off under an open hydrant; it’s a real village in the city, if you come from here.
Even though it’s gotten a little more upscale in recent years, with musicians and artists enjoying the affordability, people have thought of Fishtown as low-rent for years. But that’s fine with us. When you lived here, you at least knew who your neighbors were. My parents, Al and Maureen, raised five kids in one of the those tiny houses, with my dad walking a beat for twenty years and manning a precinct desk job for another ten after that.
GUEST POST
WHY I LOVE WRITING
Hi Avid Readers, and thanks to Nancy for letting me tell you a little about myself. I guess it's appropriate to talk about why I love writing, and it started with my folks.
When I was a kid, my folks had some strange ideas about parenting. It wasn't uncommon for me to go to the pub with my dad when I was a little boy and have a pint of "shandy" -- a bit of beer, a lot of 7Up. We were also allowed a little wine at Sunday dinner and to stay up until 10 p.m. And they absolutely refused to spend much time reading me children's stories.
Those ended by age four, which is when they bought me my first mystery. Well, sort of: Live and Let Die, by Ian Fleming. Within a year, I'd already mapped out my career path: special agent with a licence to kill. When that didn't work out, writer seemed a realistic fallback.
Now, it may sound a bit premature for a four-year-old to read a book in which a CIA agent is thrown into a shark tank. And I'd be lying if there wasn't bed wetting involved that night. But my parents had been told I had a gift for the gab and language, and as long as I could read at an adult level, they though, I might as well start.
Of course, this was probably quite a bad idea, given some of the nasty stuff that's written at an adult level. I was about to crack "The Wanting of Levine," a quite excellent 1970s parable about American politics and capitalism, when my mother yelped, ran across the room and plucked it out of my then-five-year-old hands. Years later, reading the handful of sex scenes, it seemed pretty tame. At five, it would have confused the heck out of me.
I suppose, however, that the upside of taking on adult fiction and literature early was that I absorbed it like a sponge. I probably write detective novels now specifically because my father gave me a book called "The Girl, The Gold Watch and Everything" to read as a six-year-old. It was by John D MacDonald, and though not one of those in his famous Travis McGee series, it was an introduction, and the P.I. potboilers followed shortly thereafter.
Then it was the great British-style detective writers: Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Ngaio Marsh. By the time I was in my teens, I'd read thousands of books and by 18, I was working full time as a newspaper reporter, occasional magazine feature writer and general loudmouth. I have to seriously question whether I would've taken that route had my parents gone from "Go Dog Go" to "DIck and Jane", rather than skipping me ahead to a tale about a voodoo priest politician and a cool-as-ice British agent.
Crazy, but it worked. In a pretty direct way, then, I can say I owe them my love of writing. They weren't often the greatest at parenting. But they were pretty awesome parents.
LH Thomson is the author of seven books, including Quinn Checks In, a new series about Irish-American ex-con Liam Quinn, and the Max Castillo Mysteries set in Spain.
ABOUT L.H. THOMASON
A 20-year veteran newspaper reporter and editor, L.H. Thomson has written seven novels. When he’s not writing strange newspaper and web columns about the impacts of neuroscience on sociology or the losing ways of his beloved Toronto FC, he lives in Edmonton, Canada with his wife Lori – a quality assurance manager for a major utility company who helped develop the Liam Quinn character – and their six adopted pets, who didn’t make the process any easier at all.
FIND THE AUTHOR
Be sure and check out all the other stops on the tour.
TOUR SCHEDULE
Oct. 1st - Nancy The Avid Reader - Guest Post/Excerpt
Oct. 2nd - Cherie Reads - Review/Excerpt/Giveaway
Oct. 3rd - Flora - Excerpt
Oct. 4th - Amanda - Excerpt or Guest Post
Oct. 5th - Trish Musings of a Writing Reader - Guest Post
Oct. 6th - Making Connections Blog
Oct. 7th - Alana
Oct. 8th - Nikki - Review & Excerpt
Oct. 9th - Samantha Mullins - Review
Oct. 10th - Kristine - Review..Guest Post..Giveaway
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