Robert B. Parker's Kickback
Pages: 304
Edition: Hardcover
List Price: $26.95
Publisher: Putnam
ISBN: 9780399170843
First entered: 23rd, May 2015
Number of weeks: 2
Book Summary
P.I. Spenser, knight-errant of the Back Bay, returns in this stellar addition to the iconic New York Times–bestselling series from author Ace Atkins.
What started out as a joke landed seventeen-year-old Dillon Yates in a lockdown juvenile facility in Boston Harbor. When he set up a prank Twitter account for his vice principal, he never dreamed he could be brought up on criminal charges, but that’s exactly what happened.
This is Blackburn, Massachusetts, where zero tolerance for minors is a way of life.
Leading the movement is tough-as-nails Judge Joe Scali, who gives speeches about getting tough on today’s wild youth. But Dillon’s mother, who knows other Blackburn kids who are doing hard time for minor infractions, isn’t buying Scali’s line. She hires Spenser to find the truth behind the draconian sentencing.
From the Harbor Islands to a gated Florida community, Spenser and trusted ally Hawk follow a trail through the Boston underworld with links to a shadowy corporation that runs New England’s private prisons. They eventually uncover a culture of corruption and cover-ups in the old mill town, where hundreds of kids are sent off to for-profit juvie jails.
Authors
Name: Ace Atkins
Born: Jun, 1970
About the author:
Ace Atkins is the author of eight novels, including his latest, Infamous, from G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
A former journalist who cut his teeth as a crime reporter in the newsroom of The Tampa Tribune, he published his first novel, Crossroad Blues, at 27 and became a full-time novelist at 30.
While at the Tribune, Ace earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination for a feature series based on his investigation into a forgotten murder of the 1950s. The story became the core of his critically acclaimed novel, White Shadow, which earned raves from noted authors and critics. In his next novels, Wicked City, Devil’s Garden, and now Infamous, Ace continues to carve a new a niche as both a talented storyteller and a meticulous journalist, blending first-hand interviews and original research into police and court records with tightly woven plots and incisive characters. Ace’s novels tell great American stories, weaving fact and fiction into a colorful, seamless tapestry.
Infamous, Devil’s Garden, Wicked City, and White Shadow are all very personal books for Atkins, all set in his former and current homes: San Francisco, where he lived as a child; Alabama, his family’s home and where he was born and went to college; and Tampa, where he embarked on his career as a writer and now the MidSouth where he now calls home.
Each novel contains bits of himself—friends and colleagues he once knew, people he respected or admired, family members, and personal heroes.
Right now, Ace is developing a new series for his longtime publisher—home to Tom Clancy, Patricia Cornwell, Robert Crais, John Sandford, and Robert B. Parker—set in rural Mississippi. The first of these novels will hit stores in Spring 2011.
Ace lives on a historic farm outside Oxford, Mississippi with his family.
