King of Swords

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. At the start of Stone's chilling second thriller, set in the early 1980s and the prequel to Mr. Clarinet (2007), Det. Sgt. Max Mingus and his black partner, Det. Joe Liston, think a decomposed body discovered in a primate park in Miami, Fla., is just one of the city's more bizarre murders. But when a tarot card—the ominous King of Swords—is found in the victim's stomach and his entire family killed, it's clear something darker is at work. The detectives are soon hot on the trail of a young Haitian pimp and his fortune-teller mother, who are thought to be linked to voodoo gang leader Solomon Boukman. Rumors abound about Boukman's human sacrifices and allegiance to the voodoo god of death, Baron Samedi, but few have actually seen his face. With police corruption rampant, Mingus and Liston realize that in order to take down Boukman, they'll have to hunt him alone. The violence is every bit as gruesome as in Clarinet, but Stone expertly harnesses it to propel his multilayered saga of good, evil and everything in between. (Dec.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Product Description “One of the brightest new stars in the thriller genre.”—Chicago Sun-Times Nick Stone’s first novel, Mr. Clarinet, took the crime fiction world by storm—winning enthusiastic raves (“Exquisite” —South Florida Sun-Sentinel; “A spellbinding thriller of the highest order” —Chicago Tribune) as well as a Macavity and a CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award. In The King of Swords, Stone brings back Detective Max Mingus in a chilling and mesmerizing “prequel” that combines murder, police corruption, and voodoo black magic. The King of Swords blazes with Miami heat—and it earns Nick Stone a permanent spot in the winner’s circle alongside the masters James Ellroy, Dennis Lehane, James Lee Burke, Walter Mosley…and Stephen King. From Booklist *Starred Review* Miami Task Force (MTF) detective Max Mingus and his partner, Joe Liston, are summoned to Primate Park because a corpse has been found there. But the arrival of forensic specialists, ambulances, and uniformed cops allows 200 monkeys to get loose in metropolitan Miami. It’s just another day in a city already reeling from the cocaine epidemic, the violence of the cocaine cowboys, the Mariel boatlift, and the worst urban rioting since Watts. It’s 1981, morning in Ronald Reagan’s America. But the Primate Park corpse leads Max and Joe to the slaughtered family of the corpse and ultimately to a preternaturally cunning and brutal Haitian drug lord who has connections within the MTF, the Haitian government, and possibly even the CIA, and who terrifies even the Colombian drug cartels. At some 570 pages, The King of Swords is a big crime novel, and it is also a bit messy, but British author Stone has a grand story to tell, and he does it with panache. It’s the story of a city and an era (the Reagan reference isn’t gratuitous), at once hilarious and tragic. It’s a story filled with characters that range from honorable to morally ambiguous to frighteningly evil. It’s filled with voodoo rituals, crooked cops, street life, and wrenching descriptions of how bullet-riddled corpses decompose in tropical heat. Big and messy, yes, but also brilliant. --Thomas Gaughan About the Author Nick Stone is the author of Mr. Clarinet, winner of the Crime Writers' Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger in 2006 and both the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel and the Macavity Award in 2007. He lives in London and Miami with his family. From the Back Cover Miami, 1981. Cocaine Central.Murder Capital, USA.A man about to face evil.A city about to catch fire.When Detective Max Mingus and his partner, Joe Liston, are called to the scene of a death at Miami's Primate Park, it looks like another routine—if slightly bizarre—investigation. That is, until two things turn up: the victim's family,