Older but hardly wiser, Vic Valentine finds himself in hot water again when he becomes embroiled with a movie star. Hollywood bad boy Charlie wants to make a film about the anachronistic private eye’s tumultuous life. But when the alcoholic actor becomes a murder suspect, both Charlie’s career and Vic’s dreams are put on hold, forcing the duo to flee the fog of San Francisco for the rainy Pacific Northwest. There, Vic becomes erotically entangled with Raven, a voluptuous but vicious burlesque dancer, and is driven to despair by a supernatural stalker, a mysterious sailor statue named Ivar.
Follow Vic through the mean streets of Seattle as he copes with middle-aged melancholia and confronts the demons from his past that threaten the guardian angels of his future.
“Totally engrossing, a knockout read. Funny, emotional, and hypersexual, this book is another great installment in an amazing series that spans twenty years of writing. You’ve just got to love Vic Valentine, Private Eye.”
—Michael Pool, author of Debt Crusher.
“Loquacious gumshoe Vic Valentine makes a welcome return in Hard-Boiled Heart, the sixth novel in Will Viharo’s cult classic series. Valentine, with his bottom-feeding clientele and penchant for exploring the underworld's weirdest fringes, is like a West Coast cousin to the late, great Charles Willeford’s serial detective Hoke Mosely (Miami Blues). As always, Viharo’s pulp fiction prose rockets the reader through Valentine's adventures and as the pages turn, the author's encyclopedic knowledge and adoration of pop culture's kitschiest corners elicits gut-bursts of laughter.”
—Pete Crooks, author of The Setup: A True Story of Dirty Cops, Soccer Moms, and Reality TV
“Vic Valentine is back with a lusty vengeance. Armed with the same world-weary street smarts and B-movie quotes that made him the perfect, quirky anti-hero in Love Stories Are Too Violent For Me, Valentine gets reluctantly lured out of retirement by a movie star turned murder suspect in this fast-paced thriller. It’s a story 20 years in the making, and one that any pulp fiction lover will definitely not want to miss.”
—S.W. Lauden, author of Bad Citizen Corporation
“Will Viharo writes not just neo-noir but neon noir, his Vic Valentine novels brilliant paeans to Chandler, Hammett, and other aspects of pop culture that Viharo clearly loves, from old B-movies to Frank Sinatra. But his roots are only a backdrop for Viharo’s modernization of the detective genre. Vic Valentine is a detective who falls hard for his dreams, knowing full well that he shouldn’t. For Valentine it seems that the greatest defeat would be to give in to the idea that he cannot win. In Will Viharo’s fast paced, witty and wise Vic Valentine novels, there is always hope, however hardboiled it may be. As with its predecessor, Love Stories Are Too Violent For Me, Viharo’s Hard-Boiled Heart is a joy ride for the reader.”
—Rob Pierce, author of Uncle Dust and The Things I Love Will Kill Me Yet
