ASSASSINS AND COMPANY: VOLUME I

By Louis Iezzoni

Carrying a torch for the pulps? Take a look inside. This is noir fiction for the modern age---not reconstituted---NEW! Tales of alienation, treachery, fraud and murder, they run the gamut from the psychological to the hard-boiled. The first volume begins this new series of very dark entertainments---a collection of twenty-six short stories introducing a host of dangerous characters who will reappear in succeeding volumes.ISLAND GIRL: A flame-haired femme fatale, a man killer who works her deadly trade in the islands of the Caribbean as well as the U.S. A professional burglar and assassin---and predator of young women---she is the liaison between a big city crime syndicate and the drug lords of Colombia. She will later become the archenemy of two dominant protagonists in the Assassins' series.DANCER or the Man without a Name: This professional known by different names in different places takes on a young beach bum as an apprentice and introduces him to the world of contract killing. Like Island Girl, these guys will operate in the big American cities as well as the islands. Their targets range from political assassinations of former Bosnian strongmen to the knockoffs of small time racketeers and crooked cops. NICK, the loan shark: Brought into the business by his uncle, he's a young man whose sense of honor is the measuring rod for the punishment he metes out. The parasite, the con artist, the hustler and the bully are the deadbeats he shows no mercy to. Despite his aggressive work ethic, Nick is framed for murder by a conniving brunette and a homicidal priest.LO SEK: A Vietnamese black market smuggler of computer software and illicit drugs whose extortion racket bucks the Chinese tongs and enslaves an American businessman who has had the bad luck to become acquainted with heroin. Lo Sek deploys a novel device for disposing of this underling, the simple expedient of having him stung to death.THE PHOTO-ARTIST: An artist who does photo portraits of beautiful models in gentrified neighborhoods,while planing his next residential burglary. He has an aversion for looking people in the eye and bears the simian line of the criminal across the palm of his hand. He's a second story man by trade, whose intense emotions and dystopian point of view unnerve the young therapist trying to pick his brain.THE HAULER: A truck driver and ex-con serving out his parole on the estate of a wealthy man who makes use of former convicts as his personal agents and bodyguards. The hauler finds himself in the service of this mysterious benefactor whose membership in country clubs, his contributions to political parties and his foundation for reforming career criminals belies a secret agenda for power, not unlike that of a feudal lord.THE DECOY: An intelligence agent sent to Egypt to draw terrorists' fire away from innocent civilians, is plagued by his own cynicism and the ambiguities of the world he must operate in. Exploitation of the Egyptian populace by greedy landlords, totalitarian governments and American businessmen, turns his sense of mission into an explosive and unforgiving reaction and leaves him thinking if he's even fighting on the right side.The characters portrayed here are professional criminals, but there are innocent parties among them who are swept up into circumstances beyond their control. Conventional social values cannot help them. Nor do they apply to anything around them. These are outlaws. All of them are fugitives in some way, marginalized by their own anomie and disaffection, living in a milieu where the innocent suffer the same agonies of isolation as their criminal counterparts----and all are the pawns of their intertwining destinies.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 152138147X
• ISBN13: 9781521381472
• Release Date: May 2017
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 476 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.2" x 6.0"