Librarian Tim recommends: King of Swords by Nick Stone (F Stone)

This vast, multi-layered crime novel never wavered in intensity and insight over the course of 550+ pages, and is an early front runner in the Best Book of 2009 Sweepstakes. It's 1980 in Miami and cocaine is flooding the city from Haiti and Columbia. The police are trapped in political conflicts and fighting a losing battle against the escalating violence. Max and Joe are old-school cops, and when they are called to the scene of a brutal homicide, they blow the lid off a massive conspiracy of drugs, crime and voodoo. Like masters of the dark crime novel Andrew Vachss and James Elroy, Stone does not attempt to reinvent the wheel, but rather works within the standard crime/police drama, but he revels in the cliches, expanding them with an incredible and deep story and thoughtful, believable and multi-layered characters. This is a long book that never flags, remaining intense and compelling and is an absolute must-read for fans of crime fiction.

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