Dynamite Road [Audio CD]

Andrew Klavan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2003

Jim Bishop is a hard man, as cold as the wind off the water and tough to the point of brutality. Scott Weiss is Bishop's boss, a world-weary ex-cop who runs a private detective agency out of a concrete tower in the heart of San Francisco. In this powerfully original series debut by award-winning and bestselling author Andrew Klavan, Weiss sends Bishop to investigate corruption at a Northern California airport-and so sets events in motion that will lead both men on a desperate hunt for a master assassin.

Bishop's assignment is to investigate the airport and report back to Weiss. But Bishop prefers to make up the rules as he goes along. He's willing to beat any man into the ground and draw any woman into his bed in order to get the answers he's after. A pilot himself, he takes to the air to check out the illegal flights of a thug names Chris Wannamaker. Then he coolly seduces Wannamaker's lonely wife in order to find out more.

Back in the city, as Weiss struggles to rein Bishop in, he begins a connected investigation of his own. A death in a mansion in Presidio Heights, a seemingly random murder South of Market, an apparent suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge, all seem to bear the mark of Weiss' old nemesis, an expert gun-for-hire who goes by the name of the Shadowman. It's a trail of blood, and each step of it seems to bring Weiss closer to Julie Wyant, a mysterious beauty who captures the imagination of every man she meets.

Soon Bishop has found his way into the center of a massive criminal conspiracy, a plan set to climax with an act of audacious violence and a murder that would be impossible for any killer but one. And with his operative's wife in danger, Weiss begins a race against time to outsmart the murderer who stalks his nightmares and to rescue the woman who haunts his dream.
If you like your tough guys really tough, your femme fatale and your action explosive-welcome to Dynamite Road.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What a shrewd manipulator Klavan is. The author of True Crime and Don't Say a Word again pushes our buttons with unerring finesse. In San Francisco, there's a detective agency, Weiss Investigations, run by Scott Weiss, an ex-cop whose "deep, baggy, sympathetic eyes" have seen it all. When Weiss finds out that Bernie Hirschorn, co-owner of an aviation company several miles north, is up to his propellers in skullduggery, he dispatches one of his operatives, Jim Bishop, to find out what's up. (In one of Klavan's acerbic, cut-to-the-chase observations, Hirschorn is introduced as a VBM-Very Bad Man-with "lots of money, drug connections. A lot of dead bodies on his way to the top.") Adding to the highly charged scenario, Bishop gets involved in a steamy affair with the wife of Hirschorn's chief pilot, another rogue in a lengthy cast of villains that would do Raymond Chandler proud. Meanwhile, back at the agency, Weiss continues to nurse a crush on a mysterious beauty named Julie Angel-or is she really Julie Wyant, and did she take a header off the Bay Bridge, as rumor has it? And just who is the nefarious Shadowman (who "was real whether he was real or not"), and will he find Julie before Weiss can? Klavan's riveting blend of mystery, wiseass attitude and old-fashioned moralizing makes for a wild ride.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Klavan, who likes to try new things, wanders over into Jim Thompson territory in this tough-talking, sexy thriller. Even the title suggests a Thompson novel: explosive, violent. But this is no pale imitation of someone else's work; it's flashy, exciting, and altogether original. Jim Bishop is a private eye checking out a pilot at a local airport; a handsome man with an eye for the ladies, he considers it part of his job to seduce the pilot's wife to get information. Meanwhile Bishop's boss, Scott Weiss, has a case of his own: his archenemy, a hired gun who calls himself Shadowman, may be back in action. Can Weiss keep an eye on his operative at the airport and still focus on bringing down a killer? Filled with characters straight out of a 1950s potboiler, this rip-roarin' story is tailor-made for hard-boiled fans with a soft spot for the pulp masters--Thompson, of course, but Cornell Woolrich and David Goodis, too. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Sound Library (December 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792730925
• ISBN-13: 978-0792730927
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,059,218 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Andrew Klavan has been nominated for the Mystery Writer of America's Edgar award five times and won twice. He is the author of several bestselling novels, including Don't Say A Word, filmed starring Michael Douglas, True Crime, filmed by Clint Eastwood, and Empire of Lies. He is currently writing a series of thrillers for young adults called The Homelanders. The first two novels in the series are The Last Thing I Remember and The Long Way Home. Klavan is a contributing editor to City Journal and his essays have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, among other places. His satiric video commentaries can be seen on PJTV.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A hellfire thriller of dynamic proportions!, November 9, 2006

By 

Greta L. Hudson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dynamite Road (Mass Market Paperback)

The Weiss Agency has been commissioned to investigate corruption at a Northern California airport. Ex-cop P.I. Scott Weiss sends tough-as-nails operative Jim Bishop on assignment to infiltrate and uncover illegal activities. Weiss begins a few investigations of his own, one of which ties a dangerous assassin to the case Bishop is working. Weiss attempts to reel Bishop in, but Bishop forges ahead according to his own rules which lands him on a clandestine rendezvous in the middle of nowhere. He soon finds that his cover is compromised with no way of communicating a warning about what he discovered. In a race against time, Weiss must use his instincts and Bishop his hard edge to take down a criminal conspiracy.

The characters are tough, passionate, and humanly flawed. The plot is wound tight with enough cliff-hangers to keep you teetering on the edge. Guaranteed to keep you turning the page--hard-boiled detective fiction at its finest!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, March 25, 2004

By 

Eric C. Welch (Illinois) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Dynamite Road (Klavan, Andrew) (Hardcover)

Scott Weiss, ex-cop, now owner of a private investigation agency, sends Jim Bishop, one of his operatives, to a small airport in northern California. Ray Grambling, part owner of the FBO, has concerns that one of his pilots, Chris Wannamaker, may be involved in some kind of very shady deal with Bernie Hirschorn, the other FBO partner.

Bishop, operating undercover as Frank Kennedy, enjoys living on the edge He pushes Chris to the limit by seducing his wife and spreading rumors about his drinking in hopes that he (Bishop) will be hired to replace Chris as the pilot for the big job that Hirschorn has planned.

In the meantime, Ben Fry, whom we later realize is also know as the Shadowman, has gone to great lengths (even to implanting a device under his skin that won't show up in strip searches) to get himself imprisoned in the most secure prison in California, one reserved for incorrigibles and extremely violent offenders.

Weiss, during the course of another investigation, realizes that several people have been killed or have disappeared in seemingly unrelated events, and he finds a startling connection. They are all related to Whip, a man who specialized in creating new identities for criminals, identities so secure that once created, no law enforcement agency has been able to penetrate them. Whip, having knowledge of who became whom, is terrified that he may also have become a target, so he is placed in deep protective custody in a maximum security prison (guess what's coming?).

The book is a little unusual in that we see the story evolve from three points of view: Bishop's, Weiss's, and the first-person narrative of another Weiss employee. He stands in awe of Weiss's understanding of human nature. The narrator, whose name we never learn, inadvertently solves the Case of the Spanish Virgin and discovers some key elements of the case against the Shadowman. If this all sounds a little hokey, I suppose that's because it is. Still, a very entertaining read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Humor and irony mixed with sex and murder, March 28, 2004

By 

Jules Brenner "~ Critical Mystery Tour" (Hollywood, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dynamite Road (Klavan, Andrew) (Hardcover)

In this action thriller, an investigative team has to get through a tangled web of brutal killers to get to the evil Shadowman, a killer so cold blooded and efficient that his mere presence stiffens you in fear. Jim Bishop is the field agent who thinks he's a match for the dreaded hitman, both mentally and physically. He works for Scott Weiss, an ex-cop running a PI agency and a man with uncanny perceptions into the criminal mind.

When Bishop learns that the Shadowman's target is the mysterious Julie Wyant, aka, Julie Angel, a redhead whose beauty tends to intoxicate men's minds, and that the only man who knows her new identity and location is in protective custody in a high tech maximum security prison, he realizes where the Shadowman is going or already is.

Weiss tries to rein his agent in, knowing that he's gotten involved with Kathleen, a married woman, in order to gain intel on her pilot husband who works for Hirshhorn, the murderous leader of a criminal conspiracy and the man who hired the Shadowman. But Bishop's wiles get him into the heart of the operation and defeats any attempt to save him from his own fearless hide.

In the realm of the action thriller, humor and irony are qualities that set a book and its author apart. To illustrate that in this case, here's an excerpt. Bishop had just saved Kathleen from certain death and she saved him from the same fate by grabbing the killer's gun. She holds it on Bishop, the man who has broken her heart.

"Kathleen thought so too, she thought she just might shoot him too. She sure as hell wanted to. She had shot that other man, Goldmunsen, after all, and she had felt really good about it. If she shot Bishop she thought she would feel even more good. Shooting people seemed to work for her. In fact, she was sick and tired of not shooting people."

(Review has appeared in NoHo>LA, a Los Angeles newspaper) Visit the author's review site at http://variagate.com/revumain.htm?amazon