Fuse Time

by Max Byrd

Overview

Infused with sly wit and chilling dialogue, this exciting re-release is an action-packed tale of explosions, violence, and sex from acclaimed novelist Max Byrd.

Los Angeles is being rocked by a blast wave of terror. Six bombs have exploded unlike any ever seen before—precise, efficient, and unerringly lethal. Only one mind could have built them: Simon Caute. An explosives genius, Simon’s work, marked by a macabre wit, has left a signature of smoking ruins and corpses strewn across the continent. Only one man can match Caute for sheer cunning and technical expertise: David Renner, who risks his job and his life as he races against time to save Jillian Speirs, a beautiful British actress with a violent past.

Byrd spins a gripping tale of violence and sex in Fuse Time, the ultimate ticking-clock thriller.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781630263454
Publisher:	Turner Publishing Company
Publication date:	10/16/2012
Pages:	338
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Max Byrd is the award-winning author of fourteen books, including four bestselling historical novels and California Thriller, for which he received the Shamus Award. He was educated at Harvard and King’s College Cambridge, England, and has taught at Yale, Stanford, and the University of California. Byrd is a Contributing Editor of The Wilson Quarterly and writes regularly for the New York Times Book Review. He lives in California.

Read an Excerpt

Fuse Time

---

By Max Byrd

Turner

Copyright © 2012 Max Byrd
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9781618580306

---

Renner walked six steps to his right, along the tape. The cop swiveled, hitched his gun belt, and watched. A brown-ribbed hillside abutted the building, shaggy with ice plant and as high as the roof. Curiosity seekers stood in knots lower down on the sidewalk. Where the sunlight cut through the shadows and smoke, Renner could see big charred lumps in irregular rows—rugs, he guessed, stacked for display. Whoever had placed the bomb had been smart enough not to blast the tugs themselves, but let the sprinklers and collapsing walls do the damage. At the street end of the tape Renner squinted to study the little piles of office fragments that the bomb technicians were collecting on the pavement and sorting though. He could recognize sheets of blackened and warped metal—desk drawers, parts of filing cabinets—other burned plastic shards that might have been anything at all. The cop followed slowly and tapped his fingers on his holster. Renner sniffed the air, but the fire hoses had left everything soaked though and smelling like wet socks; exhaust from the freeway came over the hill and made his eyes burn.

At the curb he looked back again, past the hood of his little Honda car, to the punched-out windows and bulging cheeks of the devastated walls. “Chaotic and senseless” was what the newspapers always said about a bombing. But no. What a bomb really was, Renner thought, was anger. Murderous, convulsive anger, the sudden explosive release of an unbearable inward emotion. He had never seen a bomb site that didn’t look to him like a human face.

Continues...

---

Excerpted from Fuse Time by Max Byrd Copyright © 2012 by Max Byrd. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Max Byrd is an expert at mingling real historical figures with his invented characters.” —The New York Times

“Lock Byrd’s cage and throw away the key—until he slips out a few more thrillers.” —The Philadelphia Enquirer

“Max Byrd is a fine and forceful writer.” —Lawrence Block, bestselling author of Eight Million Ways to Die

“Max Byrd is in the first division of American crime writing.” —The New York Times

Editorial Reviews

This is the ultimate thriller for bomb aficionados. In Chapter One, the first explosion takes place, interrupting a gentleman's hot date as his ``skull flew apart like eggshell under a hammer,'' and numerous explosions follow in various Los Angeles locales, with pithy discussions on how to make and defuse bombs. Byrd ( California Thriller ) spins a juicy tale of violence and sex but fails to generate much suspense. It is obvious that the L.A. police are wrong in their theory that each bomb was set by a different guy, and equally obvious that the right-thinking person is brilliant, burnt-out, vodka-swilling bomb expert David Renner, who suspects that a single freelance bomber is responsible even though there is no readily apparent link among the various bombings. The characters are intriguing, most notably Jillian Magid, a fetching actress who may or may not be in cahoots with the bomber but who definitely is Renner's type. Byrd's spicy writing (``In Venice Beach you could tattoo your dick on the sidewalk, swap Uzis for cotton candy, nobody would look twice'') makes for a lively, if at times overbearing book. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Max Byrd is an expert at mingling real historical figures with his invented characters.” —The New York Times

“Lock Byrd’s cage and throw away the key—until he slips out a few more thrillers.” —The Philadelphia Enquirer

“Max Byrd is a fine and forceful writer.” —Lawrence Block, bestselling author of Eight Million Ways to Die

“Max Byrd is in the first division of American crime writing.” —The New York Times

From the Publisher