Kirjahaku

Stephen Wilcox's second upstate New York mystery series, featuring rascal reporter Elias "Hack" Hackshaw, debuted last year to rave reviews. Now Hack is back - and in quite a mess - as he becomes embroiled in a real estate controversy that turns ugly indeed. Kirkville's NIMBY (Not-in-my-backyard) brigade is up in arms about the county's plans to install a landfill in a remote corner of their town; and, as always, Hack - chief opinionator for the Triton Advertiser and town gadfly - finds himself caught squarely in the middle. Wouldn't it be better, he reasons in an editorial, to accept the inevitable? Wouldn't it indeed, his loyal detractors shout back, when you yourself stand to make a tidy sum of cash out of the deal? In a generous gesture to hear both sides of the issue, Hack agrees to interview one of the landfill's opponents, Elton Venable. But when Hack arrives at the abandoned home that stands in the way of the landfill, he finds that not only those old walls had been left to rot. Elton Venable himself lies dead on the floor - leaving Hack the prime suspect. Hack is a fast talker - he's juggling suspicious cops, two or three doomed relationships, and newspaper deadlines, all at once - but The Nimby Factor promises to vex him more than anything that has come before.

Returning for his fourth misadventure, small-town newspaperman and social gadfly Elias Hackshaw finds himself immersed in a mystery involving a dead con man and a missing gypsy princess with the improbable name of Bimbo Wanka. Through no fault of his own -- well, almost none -- Hack becomes a suspect in the case when the cops mistakenly conclude that he was an acquaintance of the murdered con artist. Meanwhile, Bimbo's parents turn up on Hack's doorstep demanding he turn over their missing daughter, or face a gypsy curse. To add to the mayhem, a local industrialist is badgering Hackshaw to oversee a major renovation to his monstrosity of a house, and Hack's sister Ruth is hectoring him to forget everything else and see to his duties as editor of The Triton Advertiser. Trapped by circumstance, Hack begins poking into things and soon discovers a circus assortment of off-beat characters: gypsies in cowboy hats, a con man with a conscience, a sheriff's investigator without a heart -- or a brain -- ham-fisted townies, and much, much more. Only a strong survival instinct, and his usual portion of dumb luck, can save Hackshaw this time around. Earlier Praise for Stephen F. Wilcox and the Elias Hackshaw series: “Hilarious . . . This is a wonderful (series) debut, a clever and comic mystery filled with engaging, quirky characters and colorful descriptions of rural life.” --San Francisco Chronicle, on The Twenty-Acre Plot “Hack delivers the laughs with trenchant observations on small-town life and wry acknowledgment of his own shortcomings . . . hilarious.” --Murder & Mayhem, on The Painted Lady “Hack is, as always, the proverbial pearl before swine, a romantic hiding in pessimism, a jewel of a journalist buried beneath the dreary society columns.” --Publishers Weekly, on The Painted Lady

"Slowly I turned…page after page." Niagara Fall, with its edgy mix of sly humor and sudden, matter-of-fact violence, is a different kind of crime novel for Stephen F. Wilcox, author of the Elias Hackshaw comic mystery novels. Amateur hit men, not-so-wise guys, and gals with guns and comfortable shoes cross paths with a love-lorn ex-monk toting an empty camera and a falls fetish, in America's honeymoon capital. The action begins with a suburban housewife deciding to hire a novice hit man to knock off her insurance man husband, setting off a chain-reaction of mistaken identities, dishonor among thieves, misbegotten romance, and, ultimately, murder. And more murder. From the notorious Love Canal neighborhood to the precipice of the famous falls itself, Niagara Fall will keep you guessing, keep you gasping, keep you laughing, and keep you reading to the very last page. "Wilcox… can write a wonderfully crusty, wry turn of phrase." —Kirkus Reviews