Jim Nesbitt

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About Jim Nesbitt

Jim Nesbitt is the author of three hard-boiled Texas crime thrillers that feature battered but dogged Dallas PI Ed Earl Burch -- THE LAST SECOND CHANCE, a Silver Falchion finalist; THE RIGHT WRONG NUMBER, an Underground Book Reviews "Top Pick"; and, his latest, THE BEST LOUSY CHOICE, gold medal winner for best crime fiction in the 2020 Independent Press Book Awards and bronze medal winner in the best mystery/thriller e-book category of the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards. Nesbitt was a journalist for more than 30 years, serving as an reporter, editor and roving national correspondent for newspapers and wire services in Alabama, Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Washington, D.C. He chased hurricanes, earthquakes, plane wrecks, presidential candidates, wildfires, rodeo cowboys, migrant field hands, neo-Nazis and nuns with an eye for the telling detail and an ear for the voice of the people who give life to a story. His stories have appeared in newspapers across the country and in magazines such as Cigar Aficionado and American Cowboy. He is a lapsed horseman, pilot, hunter and saloon sport with a keen appreciation for old guns, vintage cars and trucks, good cigars, aged whiskey and a well-told story. He now lives in Athens, Alabama.

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The Best Lousy Choice: An Ed Earl Burch Novel Jul 6, 2019

by Jim Nesbitt

( 57 )

$4.99

Dallas private eye Ed Earl Burch is an emotional wreck, living on the edge of madness, hosing down the nightmares of his last case with bourbon and Percodan, dreading the next onslaught of demons that haunt his days and nights, including a one-eyed dead man who still wants to carve out his heart and eat it.

Burch is also a walking contradiction. Steady and relentless when working a case. Tormented and unbalanced when idle. He’s deeply in debt to a shyster lawyer who forces him to take the type of case he loathes -- divorce work, peephole creeping to get dirt on a wayward husband.

Work with no honor. Work that reminds him of how far he’s fallen since he lost the gold shield of a Dallas homicide detective. Work in the stark, harsh badlands of West Texas, the border country where he almost got killed and his nightmares began.

What he longs for is the clarity and sense of purpose he had when he carried that gold shield and chased killers for a living. The adrenaline spike of the showdown. Smoke ‘em or cuff ‘em. Justice served -- by his .45 or a judge and jury.

When a rich rancher and war hero is killed in a suspicious barn fire, the rancher’s outlaw cousin hires Burch to investigate a death the county sheriff is reluctant to touch.

Seems a lot of folks had reason for wanting the rancher dead -- the local narco who has the sheriff on his payroll; some ruthless Houston developers who want the rancher’s land; maybe his own daughter. Maybe the outlaw cousin who hired Burch.

Thrilled to be a manhunter again, Burch ignores these red flags, forgetting something he once knew by heart.

Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it. And it might just get you killed.

But it’s the best lousy choice Ed Earl Burch is ever going to get.

Other Formats: Paperback

The Last Second Chance: An Ed Earl Burch Novel (Ed Earl Burch Crime Thriller Book 1) Mar 25, 2016

by Jim Nesbitt

( 59 )

$3.99

Ed Earl Burch, a cashiered vice and homicide detective, has his life narrowed down to chasing financial fugitives from the carnage of the oil bust and savings and loan crash that scarred Dallas in the mid-1980s. Throw in the occasional wayward spouse and a ready eye for the next round of bourbon, sipped with a boot resting on the rail of his favorite saloon.

He’s an ex-jock gone to seed, a private investigator with bad knees and a battered soul. He’s trying to keep at bay the memories of three ex-wives, the violent mistakes that got him booted off the force, a dead partner and the killer who got snuffed before Burch could track him down.

Play it smart and cautious. Keep the lines straight. Don’t take a risk. Don’t give a damn. It’s the creed of the terminal burnout and he’s living it a day at a time, drink by drink.

That all changes when Carla Sue Cantrell, a short blonde with ice-blue eyes and a taste for muscle cars, crystal meth and the high-wire double-cross, walks into his life. Pointing a Colt 1911 at his head, she tells him his partner’s killer, a narco named Teddy Roy Bonafacio, is still alive. She forces him into a deadly game where Burch is framed for murder and chased by cops and the narco’s hitman, a nasty piece of work named Willie "Badhair" Stonecipher.

Burch and Cantrell are on the run through the scrubby Texas Hill Country, home of the sixth largest bat cave in the world, and the high desert of El Paso and northern Mexico. They're gunning for the same man both want dead – Bonafacio.

Known as T-Roy or El Rojo Loco, he's surrounded himself with powerful allies at a rancho on the Mexican side of the border, including an old bruja and her sons who have a taste for human sacrifice rooted in the way of the ancient Aztecs.

Final destination – kill or be killed.

Take a waltz across Texas with Ed Earl Burch and Carla Sue Cantrell. It’s one helluva dance.

Other Formats: Paperback

The Right Wrong Number: An Ed Earl Burch Novel (Ed Earl Burch Crime Thriller Book 2) Feb 1, 2017

by Jim Nesbitt

( 33 )

$3.99

When the phone rings long after midnight, it spells trouble of the lethal kind for Dallas private eye Ed Earl Burch in a gritty and relentless hard-boiled thriller that races from the gleaming towers of Houston to the decadent charms of New Orleans and the stark desert mountains of the Texas Big Bend country and northern Mexico.

Burch is a cashiered homicide detective with bad knees, a wounded liver and an empty bank account. He’s been hired to protect an old flame after the disappearance of her husband, a high-flying Houston financier who ripped off his clients, including some deeply unsavory gentlemen from New Orleans.

It’s a simple job that goes wrong fast, plunging Burch into a ruthless contest where nothing and nobody can be trusted. Money and sex tempt him to break his own rules—twin temptations served up by the old flame, a rangy strawberry blonde with a violent temper and a terminal knack for larceny and betrayal.

Those New Orleans gentlemen give the game a more murderous edge by sending two hitmen to reclaim their stolen goods and kill anybody involved in the score.

Burch also faces an old adversary, Houston homicide detective Cider Jones, a mystic with Comanche blood who blames Burch for his partner’s death and wouldn’t mind seeing him wind up dead.

When his best friend gets murdered in Dallas by hired muscle, Burch blames himself and grimly sets out for vengeance that also delivers a bloody form of redemption.

The action is as remorseless and unpredictable as a runaway cement truck, leading to a lonely white chapel in an abandoned mining town on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.

Jim Nesbitt’s first novel, THE LAST SECOND CHANCE, is an award-winning hardboiled thriller that also features Ed Earl Burch, the Dallas PI who has been called “a classic American anti-hero.” The book won the best hardboiled mystery category for 2016 from Indie Author Crime Masters and was named a five-star Top Pick by Underground Book Reviews and finalist for their 2017 Novel of The Year competition.

Other Formats: Paperback

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