The Animals After Midnight: A Darby Holland Crime Novel

by Jeff Johnson

Overview

"Elmore Leonard fans should be pleased." —Publishers Weekly

"Darby Holland is a modern hero in the mod of Sam Spade and Marlow only with more tattoos and in steel-toed boots."  —Ace Atkins, New York Times-bestselling author of Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn

In this third novel in the Darby Holland Crime Novel series, Darby's past rises up to do more than haunt him. You can run, but in the information age you can only hide for so long. Midnight Rider Productions is a dark web nightmare machine, headed by the one man who years ago drove Darby to hide in the seamy environs of Old Town and make his life there. But Darby left his own mark back in the day and the shadowy head of production has a grudge to settle. Rider has found him at long last and plans to make an example of him. Every dark secret of Darby’s is exposed, every triumph reversed, every dream made real is set on fire, and as the Feds circle, smelling blood in the water, Darby has to run the most brutal rearguard action in the history of crime-meets-crime and gamble that he has finally grown powerful enough, crazy enough, and hard enough to beat the Devil himself. Meanwhile his best friend and should-be lover Delia, is about to be married to someone with his own dark secrets. With the help of his friends new and old, Darby must save Delia and himself and the rest of the Lucky Supreme faithful as he plays one force against another with desperate brilliance in an epic conflict that rages through the dark underbelly of Portland, Oregon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628729757
Publisher:	Arcade
Publication date:	03/05/2019
Series:	Darby Holland Crime Novel Series , #3
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Jeff Johnson is a twenty-year veteran tattoo artist who has inked gang members, age-defying moms, and sociopaths; he's defused brawls and tended delicate egos. He is also the author of the memoir, Tattoo Machine: Tall Tales, True Stories, and My Life in Ink, and the novels Everything Under the Moon, Knottspeed, Deadbomb Bingo Rayand the first two novels in the Darby Holland crime novel series: Lucky Supreme and A Long Crazy Burn. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Editorial Reviews

12/17/2018

Darby Holland has a complex backstory, as shown in Johnson’s engrossing third novel featuring the Portland, Ore., tattoo parlor and strip club owner (after 2017’s A Long Crazy Burn). Early on, for example, the reader learns that Darby once drugged a real estate developer and sent “him off to die in Russia.” Now some of that checkered past has resurfaced. Darby returns home one night to find concrete evidence to buttress his suspicion that someone has been stalking him—footprints in the dirt outside his bedroom window. The search to identify his stalker turns deadly. Eventually, the trail leads to Midnight Rider Productions, which has been producing episodic documentaries. The company’s sadistic business model is to destroy a person’s life and film the resulting decline, which in at least one instance ends in suicide. Johnson lightens the heavy subject matter with odd subplots, including Darby’s journey into the woods to bury a friend’s nephew’s dead and frozen pet. Elmore Leonard fans should be pleased. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

In Praise of Animals After Midnight: 
"Elmore Leonard fans should be pleased." —Publishers Weekly

“There is one Portland, Oregon, that is marked by polite, gentrified civility, and then there’s its fever-dream, noir-drenched opposite, a dimension reached by walking out the back door of the Lucky Supreme, the Old Town tattoo parlor dreamed up by Jeff Johnson and overseen by master tattist Darby Holland, another mind-altering creation of Johnson’s. In this universe, the good guys come from the side-show tents, the bad guys have escaped from the cages, and the mayhem is managed by a ringmaster with a surgeon’s touch and a comic’s timing. Bravo.”—Les Standiford, New York Times bestselling author of Last Train to Paradise

“This is a really good book full of bad people you’ll sorely miss as soon as you're not reading about them anymore. Get started and you’ll get over it sooner.”—Thomas Perry,New York Times bestselling author of The Bomb Maker

Praise for the Lucky Supreme Series: "Johnson’s frenetic follow-up to Lucky Supreme opens with a bang...takes readers on a wickedly rough, terribly strange, oddly amusing trip." –-Publishers Weekly on A Long Crazy Burn
"What wonderful Northwest noir. Lucky Supreme cruises through Portland's underworld with a raunchy grace and an unfailing sense of black humor. I loved it." —New York Times bestselling & 3-time Edgar Award-winning author T. Jefferson Parker

"The bastard lovechild of Charles Bukowski and Raymond Chandler, Lucky Supreme is a novel so good you’ll want to ink it into your skin." —Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire Mysteries, the basis of Netflix hit drama Longmire.
Lucky Supreme is one hell of a book. I didn't know anyone could do noir like this. Now I know Jeff Johnson can. —Joe R. Lansdale, author of Paradise Sky.
"As hip and cool as the neon rain-slicked slicked streets of Portland. Darby Holland is a modern hero in the mold of Sam Spade and Marlowe only with more tattoos and in steel-toed boots. A funny and very gritty book with cool folks, cool music, and wonderful sense of place." — Ace Atkins, New York Times Bestselling author of The Innocents and Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn.

"Jeff Johnson is the real deal. His work is fast and funny, down and dirty—one moment as smooth as 18-year-old bourbon and the next as rough as a country road. A great talent, a pleasure to read." —Brad Smith, author of Red Means Run

Praise for Deadbomb Bingo Ray "The launch of Johnson’s new series, as inventive and comic as the Darby Holland books (Lucky Supreme, etc.)" — Publisher's Weekly
"This evil strut of a book is wildly smart, utterly warped and exultant in its own mad glory."—Warren Ellis, author of The New York Times best-selling novel Gun Machine
Praise for Everything Under the Moon

"There’s a whole world out there, that most of us never need to know about. A world of predators and prey, and predators who prey on predators. It’s a dog eat dog world, and things are getting a bit hairy. It’s Jeff Johnson’s world, where the volume is always cranked up to eleven, the violence is cranked up to the max, and it’s just one damned thing after another. The pace is fast, the plot is racing and restraint has been kicked into the gutter. And it’s got werewolves. What more do you want?" —Simon R. Green, New York Times Bestselling author of Tales from the Nightside

Praise for Tattoo Machine:
"Jeff Johnson is a gifted and natural storyteller, and he knows things you don't know." — John Irving

"Tattoo parlors are showcases for the socially disreputable, the brazenly nonconformist and the indelibly creative, all on display in this colorful memoir."—Publishers Weekly

"If you like skin art, welcome aboard."—Kirkus Reviews

"Absolutely fascinating."—The Washington Post

"Funny, outlandish, and sometimes disturbing..."—New York Post

"Astonishing candor and brilliant imagery."—London Free Press
"Tattoo Machine is meticulously observed, savagely funny, and deeply compassionate. It's a tale of up-from-under redemption through the shadowed art of personal symbolism. Jeff Johnson is a sharp-eyed master tattoo artist and an extraordinary writer."—Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love

"An amazing firsthand account of all things you wondered about tattoo shops. I loved it."—Gus Van Sant

"A wry, tender story about the tribulations of flesh and ink—and funny as hell. I've never understood why people get tattoos, but after reading Jeff's excellent book I may just get one myself." —Steve Dublanica, author of New York Times Bestselling Waiter Rant

"For everyone out there who is as fascinated by skin art as much as I am, Jeff Johnson's memoir is a must read, a gritty, brutally honest account of his life and years in the tattoo business. Equally hilarious, alarming, heartbreaking, rebellious, and philosophical, Tattoo Machine gets inside your head and leaves an impression that goes deeper than any needle, one that will only be wiped away when you, dear customer, are dead and gone."—Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff

"One of the best books I've read so far this year. A reading experience that transcends the subject matter."—Jeff VanderMeer

"Jeff Johnson is a gifted and natural storyteller, and he knows things you don't know." — John Irving
Praise for the Lucky Supreme Series: "Johnson’s frenetic follow-up to Lucky Supreme opens with a bang...takes readers on a wickedly rough, terribly strange, oddly amusing trip." –-Publishers Weekly on A Long Crazy Burn
"What wonderful Northwest noir. Lucky Supreme cruises through Portland's underworld with a raunchy grace and an unfailing sense of black humor. I loved it." —New York Times bestselling & 3-time Edgar Award-winning author T. Jefferson Parker

"The bastard lovechild of Charles Bukowski and Raymond Chandler, Lucky Supreme is a novel so good you’ll want to ink it into your skin." —Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire Mysteries, the basis of Netflix hit drama Longmire.
Lucky Supreme is one hell of a book. I didn't know anyone could do noir like this. Now I know Jeff Johnson can. —Joe R. Lansdale, author of Paradise Sky.
"As hip and cool as the neon rain-slicked slicked streets of Portland. Darby Holland is a modern hero in the mold of Sam Spade and Marlowe only with more tattoos and in steel-toed boots. A funny and very gritty book with cool folks, cool music, and wonderful sense of place." — Ace Atkins, New York Times Bestselling author of The Innocents and Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn.

"Jeff Johnson is the real deal. His work is fast and funny, down and dirty—one moment as smooth as 18-year-old bourbon and the next as rough as a country road. A great talent, a pleasure to read." —Brad Smith, author of Red Means Run

Praise for Deadbomb Bingo Ray "The launch of Johnson’s new series, as inventive and comic as the Darby Holland books (Lucky Supreme, etc.)" — Publisher's Weekly
"This evil strut of a book is wildly smart, utterly warped and exultant in its own mad glory."—Warren Ellis, author of The New York Times best-selling novel Gun Machine
Praise for Everything Under the Moon

"There’s a whole world out there, that most of us never need to know about. A world of predators and prey, and predators who prey on predators. It’s a dog eat dog world, and things are getting a bit hairy. It’s Jeff Johnson’s world, where the volume is always cranked up to eleven, the violence is cranked up to the max, and it’s just one damned thing after another. The pace is fast, the plot is racing and restraint has been kicked into the gutter. And it’s got werewolves. What more do you want?" —Simon R. Green, New York Times Bestselling author of Tales from the Nightside

Praise for Tattoo Machine:

"Tattoo parlors are showcases for the socially disreputable, the brazenly nonconformist and the indelibly creative, all on display in this colorful memoir."—Publishers Weekly

"If you like skin art, welcome aboard."—Kirkus Reviews

"Absolutely fascinating."—The Washington Post

"Funny, outlandish, and sometimes disturbing..."—New York Post

"Astonishing candor and brilliant imagery."—London Free Press
"Tattoo Machine is meticulously observed, savagely funny, and deeply compassionate. It's a tale of up-from-under redemption through the shadowed art of personal symbolism. Jeff Johnson is a sharp-eyed master tattoo artist and an extraordinary writer."—Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love

"An amazing firsthand account of all things you wondered about tattoo shops. I loved it."—Gus Van Sant

"A wry, tender story about the tribulations of flesh and ink—and funny as hell. I've never understood why people get tattoos, but after reading Jeff's excellent book I may just get one myself." —Steve Dublanica, author of New York Times Bestselling Waiter Rant

"For everyone out there who is as fascinated by skin art as much as I am, Jeff Johnson's memoir is a must read, a gritty, brutally honest account of his life and years in the tattoo business. Equally hilarious, alarming, heartbreaking, rebellious, and philosophical, Tattoo Machine gets inside your head and leaves an impression that goes deeper than any needle, one that will only be wiped away when you, dear customer, are dead and gone."—Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff

"One of the best books I've read so far this year. A reading experience that transcends the subject matter."—Jeff VanderMeer

From the Publisher