"Tony Black is my favourite British crime writer" - Irvine Welsh
Welcome
Gus Dury 4 - LONG TIME DEAD - Out Now
"From the word go, the no-nonsense cynicism of Dury is back and in full throttle ... Dury has the potential to be a long-running success story of Tartan Noir." - The Scotsman
''Ripping, gutsy prose and a witty wreck of a protagonist makes this another exceptionally compelling, bright and even original thriller.'' - The Mirror
"If you've yet to discover the hardcore brilliance of Gus Dury, pour yourself a large one and start here." - The Daily Record
PAPERBACK OUT NOW
Gus Dury is a changed man. He is off the Edinburgh streets and back with estranged wife, Debs. He has promised her that he won't get involved in any more dodgy cases which the police can't or won't solve.
Above all, he's off the drink. In his pocket at all times is a half bottle of scotch, but although the label is worn to shreds, he has never so much as loosened the cap.
But when his brother Michael is found dead with a bullet in his heart and Gus' life begins to unravel all over again. How can he keep the promises he has made and still avenge his brother's murder?
Amazon orders ... here
Gus Dury is back on the drink. While in hospital after a hit-and-run accident, his best friend, Hod, asks him to investigate the ritual, on-campus hanging of an Edinburgh University student. The murder victim's mother is a high-profile actress, who has promised a big-money reward. Gus, desperate for money, goes undercover at the university, taking a janitor's job, and soon uncovers a similar ritualistic hanging which took place in the 70s. Few of the students are prepared to talk about it - until another one of their group turns up dead by the same method. But Gus now moves into very dangerous waters as he begins to discover what and who is really behind it all - and he becomes the next target for the executioner.
Amazon orders ... here
EVENTS
Friday September 17, 7pm
Australian launch
LONG TIME DEAD
Brunswick Bound Books
361 Sydney Road,
Brunswick, Melbourne
Praise for Tony Black -
"Tony Black is my favourite British crime writer and Gus Dury the genre's most interesting protagonist. Like his previous books, Loss has the power, style and street swagger that makes most of his contemporaries a little bland by comparison."
- Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting
"Powerful, focused, and intense ... and then it gets better. Get your money down early on this young man - he's dead serious and deadly accurate."
- Andrew Vachss, author of Hard Candy
“Only two books in and Tony Black is already one of my favourite living crime writers. Gutted is simply superb.”
- Nick Stone, author of Mr Clarinet
"Black is the new noir."
- Allan Guthrie, author of Two-Way Split
"Tony Black is one of those excellent perpetrators of Scottish noir ... a compelling and convincing portrayer of raw emotions in a vicious milieu."
- Marcel Berlins, The Times
"If you're a fan of the Ian Rankins, Denise Minas and Irvine Welshes of this world, this is most certainly one for you."
- The Scotsman
"The enigmatic Dury continues to be the punk rocker of the Scottish crime scene - anarchic, rebellious and never afraid to shove his Doc Martens where they're not wanted."
- Daily Record
"As washed-up private detectives go, Gus Dury is compelling - he's as hard as any criminal and twice as self-destructive."
- London Evening Standard
"Tony Black has written two of the finest crime novels to come out of the UK in the past twenty years and I'm willing to bet that in twenty years, Paying for It and Gutted will be on the top ten list of any crime list. But now comes Loss ... Phew-oh ... It's like having yer ass kicked and yer heart shrived simultaneously. What a privilege to watch a master writer achieve everything you'd hoped for and then some."
- Ken Bruen, author of London Boulevard
"This is modern crime at its most brutal, its most affecting, its most honest and its most intelligent."
- Russel D. McLean, author of The Good Son
"Black writes about urban blight and the curse of alcohol like no other, but his down at heel tales are also full of everyday humour. Harrowing but indispensable."
- Maxim Jakubowski
“This is first-class writing, with the authentic feel of scraped knuckles, battered bodies, damaged minds and the darkness of despair that comes with a tortured soul ... Tony Black has been compared with Billingham, Rankin and Kernick, which is praise indeed by anyone’s standards. Personally, going by this book, I think he’s in a league of his own.”
- Adrian Magson, Shots Mag
“Sharp pacing and with a wonderful narrative Black delivers a book that can’t be put down and will stick with you after reading. If this were Nascar Black would be holding a lot of checkered flags.”
- Jon Jordan, Crimespree
"Tony Black's first novel hits the ground running, combining a sympathetic ear for the surreal dialogue of the dispossessed with a portrait of a city painted in the blackest humour."
- Cathi Unsworth
"I was captivated by Black’s command of language, his sense of pace and the narrative striated with humour pulled right off the gallows ... Perhaps Dury’s Edinburgh is as interesting, if not more than Rebus’."
- Ali Karim
When the gangland owner of a pit bull that killed a three-year-old girl is found gutted on an Edinburgh hill Gus Dury is asked to investigate, and soon finds himself up to his neck in the warring underworld of the city's sink estates.
Amidst illegal dog fights, a missing fifty grand and a police force and judiciary desperate to cover their links to a brutal killing, Gus must work fast to root out the truth, whilst the case sinks its teeth ever deeper into him.
Amazon orders ... here
A dead 20-year-old lies mangled and tortured in the tartan-swathed Scots capital of Edinburgh.
As washed-up investigator Gus Dury starts poking about he uncovers a seedy vice ring linked to Eastern European people smugglers and one of the city's political figureheads.
It's all a very messy business, and someone will soon be Paying for It.
Amazon orders ... here
