The formidable Jedidiah Ayres, who is named like one of my characters, has posted a review of my unpublished novel Dirtnap Avenue on his blog Hardboiled Wonderland. Jed, who will be sharing the pages of Sex, Thugs and Rock & Roll with me this summer, seemed like the perfect person to review my novel about the criminal roots of St. Louis, catching many of my crime-nerd references:

His first novel, Dirtnap Avenue mines the same rich ground. Harper draws upon the sensationalized and mythologized elements of Missouri’s outlaw tradition and crime history from the James Younger Gang to Tom Egan and up to the Chain of Rocks Bridge murders and so does his protagonist, Jesse Priest, who sees himself as belonging to that tradition as a singular unfolding narrative and is seeking his place in it.

Thanks for the kind words, Jed.

Currently reading: The amazing In the Rogue Blood by John Carlos Blake.