ABOUT THE BOOK
Wesley Joy is a defender of drug scum living in semi-retirement in Galveston. He's best pals with seedy Dallas PI Jack Flippo - they once worked together as prosecutors - so when the cops find heroin in Joy's car after he's pulled over speeding, Flippo gets the inevitable call for help.
Looking into the circumstances behind Joy's arrest, Flippo finds a life in a mess as big as his own. Money, drugs, and sex are at the centre of a dangerous tangle that involves wisecrackin' renegade DEA agents, crooked lawyers, and a bitter reporter determined to use Joy's 'unjust incarceration' as the stepping stone to a big-time job in, say, Abilene.
Flippo makes a great antihero: he doesn't like who he's become but can't muster the courage to make a change. Until he can, his best shots at happiness will come from unregistered .38s and bottles of cheap bourbon. This is the hard-boiled novel at its grittiest and most unsentimental. Jack Flippo is the real deal.
'Tarantino meets Carl Hiaasen' - Daily Mirror [read the full review]
This is your last chance to catch the Jack Flippo series. The Texan lawyer turned private investigator crawls into action when two drug dealers are murdered, their stash of cash is stolen, and his old mate is pinned with the rap. Throw in a hick cop with delusions of grandeur, a reporter hot for a scoop, an adulterous wife and a federal narc who thinks he's a comedian - and you've got Tarantino meets Carl Hiaasen. Real crime with real laughs. Hits the ground running and goes like the clappers 'til the end.
'For a Texan who isn't me, Doug Swanson can really write.' - Kinky Friedman
'Doug Swanson does Dallas the way Robert Parker does Boston - from the bottom up.' - Carl Hiaasen
'You definitely want to be in Dallas when Jack Flippo's on a case' - The New York Times
'the closest yet that he's come to full-blown noir' - Uncut Magazine [read the full review]
When high-flying Dallas district attorney Jack Flippo's ill-considered affair with the wife of a big-time drug dealer he's in the process of bringing a case against costs him his marriage and career and his life turns bad in a prolonged black-out of self-destruction, most of his by-now former friends don't want to know. A few stick with him, however, and he'll owe them forever. Which is just what Wesley Joy, prosecuting lawyer-turned-big bucks defender of dubious criminal parties, now retired, is counting on when he calls Jack from jail in Luster, East Texas, where he's been arrested for driving a stolen car and possessing heroin, Wesley protesting his innocence and asking for Jack's help.
This is how Doug J Swanson's House of Corrections starts: with a lie. Plenty more follow in the fifth - and sadly final - outing for the reckless, wisecracking Flippo. Previous novels in the series have been a terrific mix of wildly inventive black humour and grim violence, reminiscent of Elmore Leonard's mid-Seventies hardboiled classics. There are plenty of laughs here, too - but Swanson's books have become progressively darker, nastier, and House of Corrections is the closest yet that he's come to full-blown noir.
By the time Jack arrives in Luster to get Wesley out of the slammer the plot has thickened considerably. What Wesley hasn't told Jack: what he's behind bars for now includes the shooting of two drug mules at somewhere called The Carefree Motel. Only Wesley's wife, the beautiful Angelique can provide him with an alibi, and she's gone inconveniently missing. Jack's job now: find her. What follows is a conspiracy of lies, betrayal, serial duplicities, dead bodies, Jack in the middle of it all, baffled by multiple uncertainties, hunted by rogue DEA agent Reece Pepper and his diminutive but deadly associated, Arthur Murry Murray. Jack not so innocent himself, we discover, in one of the many surprises Swanson contrives before the bleak and shocking ending.
'Fast and furious, and as hot as a sizzling Texan steak' - Janice Young, Yorkshire Post [read the full review]
Texans always spring a few surprises on the unwary, as George W has shown, and Jack Flippo, private investigator, is no exception. Laid-back Flippo is surprised when an old friend, a lawyer in jail on a drug charge, seeks his help. But the lawyer's wife, the only one who can alibi him, suddenly goes AWOL. It gets worse for Flippo when the ol' buddy loses patience and busts out of jail with an ex-con he'd formerly defended. Now the chase is on, amid a welter of corrupt lawyers, cute reporters, federal bad guys and stacks of drug money. Swanson is skilful at this type of thriller, sadly billed as the last in the Jack Flippo series. Fast and furious, and as hot as a sizzling Texan steak.
