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No More Heroes

Name: No More Heroes
Author: Ray Banks
ISBN: 9780151014590

by Ray Banks

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Overview

It’s the hottest summer on record in Manchester, England, and down-at-heel private eye Cal Innes is struggling to keep cool. He has taken a job evicting families on behalf of local slumlord Donald Plummer, while the English National Socialists bring racial tensions to the boiling point. A firebomb attack on a Plummer property thrusts Innes into the spotlight as he rescues a child from the burning building. But when Plummer hires him to track down the arsonists, Innes finds himself dealing with more than neo-Nazis and his rapidly worsening painkiller addiction.

Time's running out and the temperature keeps rising. Manchester needs a hero and Cal Innes is the closest it has.

Discover why bestselling author Laura Lippman declared that Ray Banks "raises the bar for hardboiled fiction on both sides of the Atlantic."

Synopsis

Time's running out and the temperature keeps rising. Manchester needs a hero and Cal Innes is the closest it has.

Discover why bestselling author Laura Lippman declared that Ray Banks "raises the bar for hardboiled fiction on both sides of the Atlantic."

RAY BANKS has been a double-glazing salesman, a croupier, a dole monkey, and various degrees of disgruntled temp. The author of The Big Blind and Saturday’s Child, he was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, and now lives in England.

Publishers Weekly

Cal Innes matches wits (and fists) with a nasty bunch of neo-Nazis in British author Banks’s solid third novel featuring the down-on-his-luck Manchester PI (after Sucker Punch). When one of slum lord Donald Plummer’s properties gets torched, Cal, who evicts families who can’t pay the rent for Plummer, risks his life to save a child trapped inside. This heroic act brings both Cal and Plummer unwanted media attention. When Plummer receives an anonymous threat on his remaining buildings, he suspects the English National Socialists, who are up in arms because Plummer rents to immigrants. Cal, who reluctantly agrees—for a hefty fee—to look into the group, soon discovers that the ENS may not be the only instigators. Angry student demonstrators stir up the already volatile situation by protesting Plummer’s unfair leasing practices. Prone to popping pills and knocking heads, Cal is a rough-and-tumble but strangely empathetic hero. (Mar.)

About the Author, Ray Banks

RAY BANKS has been a double-glazing salesman, a croupier, a dole monkey, and various degrees of disgruntled temp. The author of The Big Blind, Saturday’s Child, and No More Heroes, he was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, and now lives in England.

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Editorials

From the Publisher

"Tough, funny and startlingly original, No More Heroes takes the modern P.I. novel to a whole new level. If you like Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin and Ken Bruen you have to read Ray Banks."—Jason Starr, author of Panic Attack and The Chill

"Cal's third rough-and-tumble first-person caper should keep most readers rapidly turning pages till the solid plot builds to a payoff in late innings."—Kirkus Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Manchester PI Callum Innes (Sucker Punch) takes on the job of finding the arsonist who set fire to a house where a woman died and he single-handedly rescued a child. He discovers that the English city he thinks he knows is home to neo-Nazis and urban terrorists, and he must face his own addiction to pain killers. VERDICT Banks is one of the freshest voices in hard-boiled crime fiction today. His protagonist talks to readers like an old friend, fills us in on the action, and lays everything out so well that we even feel his back pain, know his fear, and grow to appreciate his considerable charm. For fans of Lee Child and Michael Connelly who like the lone hero facing difficult situations.

Kirkus Reviews

A Manchester tough guy learns that no good deed goes unpunished. Ex-convict Cal Innes, a sometime private investigator, ekes out a living as the muscle for shady landlord Donald Plummer, who has a healthy disdain for the legal system. Plummer wants Cal to "accelerate" the eviction process for his many delinquent tenants. Comically complicating the job is Cal's sidekick, nicknamed Daft Frank because of a harebrained robbery scheme gone awry. Cal expects resistance, even physical opposition, from the tenants, but a locked apartment door with smoke billowing out from beneath abruptly vaults him into heroism; he rescues a reluctant little boy too terrified to talk before his rescuer passes out. Cal awakens to find himself the subject of a laudatory piece in the local newspaper. His reward for bravery is some public recognition and an additional assignment from Plummer: Find the arsonist who set the potentially fatal fire. The landlord even provides a long list of people who have it in for him. This new gig thrusts Cal into a more dangerous, though not unfamiliar, milieu as he and Frank go up against a potentially militant tenants-rights group and a faction of The English National Socialists (skinheads). The more he learns, the deeper into the muck he sinks. Though the heavy vernacular and nonstop violence aren't for everyone, Cal's third rough-and-tumble first-person caper (Sucker Punch, 2009, etc.) should keep most readers rapidly turning pages till the solid plot builds to a payoff in late innings.