Hard as Nails (Joe Kurtz Thriller) - Softcover

Investigating an abandoned amusement park where several dead bodies have been found, former private eye Joe Kurtz and his parole officer find themselves targeted by numerous adversaries, a situation that is complicated by an injury and a serial killer who is hunting down heroin addicts. Reprint.

"There's hard-boiled detective fiction and then there are the Joe Kurtz thrillers from Dan Simmons...Hard As Nails is hard to beat." -Rocky Mountain News

If You're Going To Shoot Joe Kurtz...
Ex-PI Joe Kurtz's survival is on the line when an ambush leaves him badly wounded and his parole officer Peg O'Toole barely clinging to life. Their respective professions have ensured that neither suffers from a shortage of enemies so discovering which of them was the intended target isn't easy. But Kurtz knows who's at the head of his list: Angelina Farino Ferrara, the lethal beauty who leads the Farino crime family, as well as her mob rival, ice cold Toma Gonzaga, who has his own dark history with Kurtz.

You'd Better Shoot To Kill.
The odd thing is, each wants to hire Joe Kurtz to find out who's been waging war beneath the cold gray skies of western New York. Until now, the casualties have been heroin junkies and their dealers. But now, the shootings of Kurtz and O'Toole have drawn the notice of both the newspapers and Buffalo PD Detective Rigby King, who shared Kurtz's tough childhood in a Buffalo orphanage, and who wants to put Kurtz back in prison-or back in her bed. Even Kurtz's jaded past cannot prepare him for what he's about to learn as he finds himself caught in an ever-tightening vise between the wounded and warring mob families and the cops, unaware that a maniac is waiting for his chance to strike...

"The appeal of Mike Hammer, Parker or Burke." -Booklist