Easy Death

Starred review from September 22, 2014
Set in December 1951, Boyd’s winning first crime novel will appeal to classic noir aficionados and retro hipsters alike. Bud Sweeney (called “Brother Sweetie” behind his back), local car dealer and Midwestern crime boss, sends several of his henchmen out into a blizzard, one posing as a police officer, to intercept and rob an armored car. WWII vets Eddie and Walter, one white and the other black, make off with the loot, but get into a real mess trying to keep it when they step into an odd subplot involving a formidable female park ranger and her drunken, psychotic boss. The wild narrative jumps back and forth over a 24-hour period before and after the heist. Besides writing convincingly about cops and criminals, Boyd (Nada), the pseudonym of a former police chief in central Ohio, captures the feel of postwar smalltown America, and even manages to get in some telling commentary on the period’s racial prejudice.

October 15, 2014

It's shortly before Christmas in 1951 and Walter and Eddy, along with Slimmy and Mort, are carrying out Bud Sweeney's plan for robbing an armored car. The winter weather is not cooperating with the meticulous plan, however, and it's not long before the cops and a crazy park ranger are after them. The chapters alternate among the different characters, and each section is titled either in relation to how much time has passed after the robbery or is a flashback to shortly before the crime, keeping the story suspenseful and a little off-balance as the robbery plays out. VERDICT Boyd (pseudonym of a veteran police officer) makes a bloody splash with Hard Case Crime's first Christmas novel in its lineup of crime fiction. The clever plotting and touches of humor make this an excellent holiday crime caper for readers of hard-boiled mystery.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2014
It's the week before Christmas, 1951, in small-town Ohio, a place and time where every little burg had its own newspaper, a radio station, two movie houses, and a big, marble Carnegie Library. But a historic blizzard is bearing down, and a crooked used-car dealer is planning the robbery of an armored truck filled with cash. Boyd (a pseudonym for a retired Ohio police chief) gets off to a lumpy start with odd dialogue that undermines readers' understanding of where the story is going, but he finds his stride limning an America where WWII is past, yet ever present, and TV hasn't yet supplanted radio. He also offers a number of intriguing characters, including Officer Drapp, who resolutely pursues the robbers through the blizzard; the robbers themselves, who discuss the state of race relations and their plans to go straight after the robbery; and Calpurnia Nixon, a formidable protofeminist park ranger and cousin of Senator Richard M. Nixon. Easy Death proves to be a slyly funny and entertaining read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)