This Is Life - a Jack Palms Novel (Jack Palms Crime) [Kindle Edition]

Seth Harwood (Author)

Book Description

Jack is back! In this bigger, better, and more bad-ass sequel to the grass-roots sensation Jack Wakes Up, former movie star Jack Palms returns to find San Francisco spiraling into chaos.

When a crooked cop is taken apart by a .50 caliber anti-tank gun and the SFPD rules it a suicide, Sergeant Mills Hopkins hires Jack to find the cop-killer—and who’s covering things up. Teaming with former NFL lineman Freeman Jones and sexy Federal Agent Jane Gannon, Jack discovers that Russian pimp and drug runner Alexi Akakievich is cleaning house. Across the city, beautiful young sex slaves are turning up dead—a public message to their politically connected owners that Akakievich no longer needs their business. Now he just wants their power.

Soon Jack finds himself dodging both .50 caliber shells and double-crosses as he struggles to determine how high the city’s corruption goes and how far he’ll descend into the violence and depravity of his new life to stop it.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Seth Harwood is my favorite new American writer. I recommend this book, all his books, to you. You'll thank me. Just wait." -- Tom Franklin, bestselling author of Poachers, Hell at the Breech and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

About the Author

Seth Harwood, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, was born in Boston and has lived in Cambridge, New York, St. Louis, and Iowa City. He currently lives in San Francisco, where he teaches writing at Stanford and CCSF. Author of three previous works of fiction, Seth has also written for publication in the Cambridge Chronicle & TAB, contributed to the Open Culture blog, and written for the San Francisco Chronicle, where he regularly reviews crime fiction. Marilyn Stasio, reviewing Seth’s debut, Jack Wakes Up, for The New York Times, praised its “vitality and a spirit of rebellion.” George Pelecanos, author and contributor to HBO’s The Wire, named Seth’s second novel, Young Junius, one of the best books of 2010. When he’s not writing or teaching, Seth swims, boxes, and occasionally haunts the basketball courts of San Francisco.

Product Details

• File Size: 427 KB
• Print Length: 240 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0615599001
• Publisher: CrimeWAV Books (October 2, 2011)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B005S67GPS
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #397,555 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars You're gonna hate me. February 6, 2012

By Allen s

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Everyone else gave this 5 stars.
Maybe I missed something.
Jack Palms is a B-movie action actor, who has no bad guy skills, is not a "gun guy",
and is not a PI. Yet the cops bring him into a murder investigation to help solve the murder. Why? I kept asking myself that all the way through.
The mob (who seem to control the city and the cops) is after him, yet he walks around in public, and never seems to be found. He hides out in a hotel, then hangs out in the bar.
At one point, he is hiding out with a cop, but the cop says, "There's been another murder, let's go." and they both go to the murder scene in public. What?
It was mildly amusing as an action story. He trusts strangers, after others he trusted get bumped off.

Sorry, I didn't love it.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book from a great author October 16, 2011

By F. G. Jones

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

The follow up to Jack Wakes Up is a steal at $2.99. It is like an action movie to read. If you like movies like the Transporter, Crank and the Expendables then This is Life is a must for read for you.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Seth has the skills and is growing . . May 8, 2013

By David De Zwirek

Format:Paperback

This Is Life and all the Jack Palms books by Seth Harwood are "in your face", tough, raw crime fiction - action packed, full of violence, sex and drugs - and liberal use of profanities.
They are a lot of fun.

Jack Palms is a great character - not exactly a hero and not exactly an anti-hero - and certainly not the type of guy to invite to Friday Night dinner with the family! But his heart is in the right place, he is on the side of good, and one gets to love the rogue. The other characters are, well, characters! Seth Harwood also has excellent skills as a story teller - it is a great ride reading his books - truly exhilarating.

In Seth's latest book, In Broad Daylight, Seth shows his maturation as a writer - same genre, but a much more nuanced story, better researched and not as reliant on the shock and awe of violence, sex, drugs and four letter words.

It is interesting to watch an up and coming writer develop. One day, works by Seth Harwood will be considered as literature rather than just genre writing. He isn't there yet, but Jack Palms like a rough diamond, shows his potential and his qualities.

More About the Author

Seth Harwood has published four crime novels--YOUNG JUNIUS, IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, THIS IS LIFE and the bestselling JACK WAKES UP. He holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has taught creative writing at Iowa, UMass Boston, Stanford and City College San Francisco.

In July, 2006, Mr. Harwood became the first crime author to serialize his work as a podcast-only novel, when he started posting free weekly episodes of JACK WAKES UP at his site, sethharwood.com and Podiobooks.com. Three years later, Three Rivers Press released JACK WAKES UP as a print novel on May 5th, 2009. He has now podcast three novels in the Jack Palms Crime series and a fourth, IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, at his website, sethharwood.com, where you can download and listen to all of them for free.

Mr. Harwood also hosts the online series of crime story podcasts at CrimeWAV.com, which features today's top authors in the genre reading their stories to you for free.

Originally from Boston, Seth Harwood now makes his home in San Francisco. You can contact him by email at seth (at) sethharwood (dot) com, on Twitter @sethharwood and on Facebook.