Hard Man

by Allan Guthrie

Book Overview

Pearce, an ex-con and Edinburgh hard man who's still recovering from the recent loss of his mother, is invited by the dysfunctional Baxter family to protect their pregnant sixteen-year-old daughter... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151012989
• ISBN13: 9780151012985
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 268 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.6" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Unforgettable crime thriller

HARD MAN is about as good as modern crime novels get. It's got twists, shocks, blood, and plenty of anti-heroes for you to root for, curse at, and generally become enthralled with. This is a frantic, fast-paced, cynical, hardcore story that combines a lean, powerful prose with a full-ahead no-nonsense plot. If you like damaged, self-examining, sensitive PIs, look away--HARD MAN offers you a roughly-hewn protagonist and honest brutality.

"Blood was thicker than disgust."

Pearce has a reputation as a hard man with good reason. Living in Portobello, Edinburgh's seaside town, Pearce is inclined to keep to himself since the violent death of his mother soon after that of his sister. After doing ten years for killing the junkie responsible for his sister's death, Pearce's only companion is Hilda, a male three-legged Dandie Dinmont named after the hard man's mother. With only the occasional conversation with his deceased mum, Pearce is adjusting nicely to his new home when he is accosted by Flash and Rog Baxter, whose plan is to intimidate him into accepting a job. Wrong. Pearce turns the tables on the brothers, reducing them to sniveling pulp by the time their father, Jacob, arrives. Jacob puts the deal to Pearce. The Baxter's want him to protect sixteen-year-old May from her husband, Wallace, who kicked her out when he found out she was pregnant with another man's child. Pearce's first instinct is to refuse in spite of the money, considering the Baxter's riotously dysfunctional manner of conducting business, but when Hilda is done in by Wallace ("Said the dog dropped like a stone when he hit the water."), Pearce takes it very personally, prepared to bring down May's martial arts-trained husband. Carefully planning his assault on the man who took Hilda, Pearce goes into action. Unfortunately, Wallace is more than a match and Pearce is soon in dire straights with an adversary every bit as tough. What begins as combat between Pearce and Wallace escalates into a wild melee of unpredictable violence and mayhem, guns blasting, tires screeching and the blade of a knife slicing home. Guthrie provides a wild ride that involves the Baxter family, Pearce Wallace and a guy named Jesus in a blood-soaked, frequently acerbic, tortured imbroglio that is an unpredictable page-turner. The novel speaks for itself, a hard man up against an indifferent world with nothing to lose but the three-legged dog that is his best friend. Using the harsh dialog of the streets, Hard Man pulls no punches, yet manages to humanize a most bizarre assortment of buffoons and loners, loonies and losers, Pearce left wondering what strange trick of fate has landed him in this predicament, a joyride from start to finish. Luan Gaines/2007.