The Bite (Luther Ewing Thriller) [Hardcover]

Michael Crow (Author)

Book Description

Series: Luther Ewing Thriller | Publication Date: June 19, 2003

Rave reviews greeted the debut of undercover Baltimore County narcotics cop Luther Ewing. In The Bite, this edgy black-Vietnamese Special Forces veteran is trying hard to chill, staying away from anything more dangerous than busting teenagers with Ecstasy or scouring the deep woods for crystal meth cooked up by rednecks and bikers. But one night someone takes a shot at Luther with a .45 in his own peaceful suburban parking lot-someone who's careful not to kill him. Who? Why? And what's the message?

Then brash, sexy DEA agent Francesca Russo elbows her way into his life, in a joint operation they pull off with suspicious ease. But it turns out she has her own agenda-to take over the crank business from the inside-and wants Luther on her team. He has a simple, stark choice: turn rogue and clean up Russo and her mob himself or call in the feds on one of their own. Staccato violence, gut-real characters, and miles of style keep The Bite's pages turning until the last clip has been emptied.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the third sentence of this intense, electrifying thriller, Baltimore County Police Department detective Luther Ewing is shot in the parking lot of his apartment building. But the wound isn't fatal, and Ewing is soon back at work, looking for crystal meth labs in the backwoods of Baltimore County with the help of his partner "Ice Box" Cutrone and DEA agent Francesca Russo-a smart, ambitious woman who insinuates herself into Ewing's investigation. The novel has the ring of authenticity; the pseudonymous Crow knows a lot about the dangerously ruthless denizens of the illicit drug industry and has an encyclopedic command of street slang. And while many of the characters are purely stock (complete with the appealing quirks and snappily banal dialogue of any big-budget movie), Ewing and Russo are compelling figures, bursting with energy, conflict and contradiction. This is Ewing's second outing (after Red Rain); some of his backstory (he is half black and half Vietnamese, and was a Special Ops soldier and a mercenary before joining the police force) is embedded rather clumsily in the new book. But Crow is a fine writer and a skilled plotter. The suspense is terrific, the violence graphically and convincingly rendered, and the main story line is always smart and credible. The subplots work less well, particularly the romance between Ewing and his college-age girlfriend, Helen. It's the exhilarating action that makes this novel a pleasure to read; a movie version is easy to envision, with Samuel L. Jackson the perfect actor to play Ewing if he could somehow pull off the half-Vietnamese part.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Baltimore County cop Luther Ewing, a former Special Forces operative, figures that chasing the country bumpkins who traffic methamphetamine in the county's rural areas shouldn't involve much gunplay. Then one of the country bumpkins he's chasing shoots him, and Luther's warrior instincts resurface. Once recovered, he teams up with a beautiful DEA agent to infiltrate the largest amphetamine distribution network in the area. The leaders are the Breckenridge twins--bumpkins, yes, but lethal, too, and supported by a well-armed posse. This second Luther Ewing novel is an action fan's delight. The Glocks and Sigs and shotguns become secondary characters, but there's more here than target practice. The dialogue--particularly when Luther and his partner are bantering--is streetwise and clever. The plot is peppered with enough double crosses and ambition-driven bureaucratic bumbling to keep Luther and readers questioning his alliances. All in all, a worthy and entertaining sequel to last year's critically praised Red Rain [BKL My 1 02]. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (June 19, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670032220
• ISBN-13: 978-0670032228
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,832,752 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars No wonder the author used a pen name, January 12, 2006

By 

L. Lorton (Columbia, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bite (Paperback)

This book is an embarassment; the kind of thing an adolescent would write if he knew all the words. It is rife with minor technical errors that really spoil the flow and much of the slang is years out of date and completely wrong for the age of the main character. The characters are comic book sterotypes - the hero is a big macho guy, a cop who is a rebel against the system and who was a special forces soldier and speaks fluent Russian and who has a young hot, randy girlfriend - ugh!! The plot, while plausible I guess, is nothing special.

Give me a break. I quit reading at page 151 and went on to read something by a better author.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What did you expect?, December 31, 2005

By 

Larry Scantlebury (Ypsilanti, MI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bite (Paperback)

Michael Crow writes a good novel. It is tight. It is seamless. It has a riveting plot. You care about the characters. It is also violent. As one reader pointed out, the "f" word makes a frequent appearance. Actually, with Amazon's new condordance system, close to 300 appearances in either the noun, adjective, adverb or the gerund form. Retribution is also drawn out and quite medieval. I don't recall reading the ending Crow proposes ever before and I have to say it ranks with the boiling of the dutch sailor in "Shogun."

The point of all of this is it ain't "The Mermaid Chair" or "Tuesday's with Morrie." It's rough and it's tough and it relies heavily on street slang. If Shane, riding off into the West while Brandon DeWilde cries for him, could tell the audience why he must be alone, trust me, he would be using the same lanquage Luther Ewing uses. So if you know this and it offends you . . . get my meaning?

Luther inserts himself into the chasing of the meth lab makers, sellers and killers, where he is joined by Francisca Russo, a DEA agent who seems to have a double or even triple hidden agenda.

One of the best new violent crime centerpieces along with John Rain (Barry Eisler) and Frank Corso (G. M. Ford). 5 stars. Larry Scantlebury

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Talky and violent, March 8, 2005

By 

Verna Suit (Silver Spring, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bite (Paperback)

THE BITE starts violently, ends violently, and has lots of violence in between. It's a cold, tough-talking book, with the f-word the first choice for all parts of speech. It's so talky, in fact, that it's hard to consider it a real thriller-more a mystery with a high body count. I was drawn to read THE BITE because of its setting, the suburban Towson-Cockeysville area north of Baltimore with which I thought I was familiar. But I didn't find much that was recognizable, or compelling. The book flap identifies "Michael Crow" as a pseudonym for "a prize-winning, critically acclaimed literary novelist whose works have been translated and published in nine languages." Maybe he was too embarrassed to use his real name for this one.