Broken Ground

by Joe Clifford

Overview

Jay Porter Takes on the Brutality of Small-town Political Power and Insatiable Greed

At an AA meeting, handyman and part-time investigator Jay Porter meets a recovering addict who needs his help. In the midst of another grueling northern New Hampshire winter, Amy Lupus’ younger sister, Emily, has gone missing from the Coos County Center, the newly opened rehab run by Jay’s old nemeses, Adam and Michael Lombardi.

As Jay begins looking into Emily’s disappearance, he finds that all who knew Emily swear that she’s never used drugs. She’s a straight shooter and an intern at a newspaper investigating the Center and the horrendous secret hidden in it—or beneath it.

When Jay learns of a “missing” hard drive, he is flung back to five years ago when his own junkie brother, Chris, found a hard drive belonging to Lombardi Construction. For years Jay assumed that the much-sought-after hard drive contained incriminating photos of Adam and Michael’s father, which contributed to Chris’ death. But now he believes the hard drive harbored a secret far more sinister, which the missing Lupus sister may have unwittingly discovered.

The deeper Jay digs, the more poisoned the ground gets, and the two cases become one, yielding a toxic truth with local fallout—and far-reaching ramifications.

Perfect for Fans of Dennis Lehane

While all of the novels in the Jay Porter Series stand on their own and can be read in any order, the publication sequence is:

Lamentation
December Boys
Give Up the Dead
Broken Ground
Rag and Bone

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608093489
Publisher:	Oceanview Publishing
Publication date:	05/14/2019
Series:	Jay Porter Mystery Series , #4
Edition description:	None
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Award-winning author Joe Clifford has been a homeless junkie living on the street—until he turned his life around. Now, he uses the backdrop of his experience with addiction to shine a light on the misunderstood and marginalized. No one can write with the authority of Joe Clifford when describing the reality of alcohol and drug abuse. Broken Ground is the fourth novel in his award-winning Jay Porter Series, following Lamentation, December Boys, and Give Up the Dead, and followed by Rag and Bone. Joe lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Justine, and two sons.

Editorial Reviews

"An estate recycler picks up the fragments of his life by helping others to pick up theirs. What a brilliant noir concept. And Broken Ground, the newest addition to the terrific Jay Porter series, has brilliant writing to match . . . The depth of the characters. The vividness of the New Hampshire winter setting. The importance of the novel's theme. Joe Clifford’s a crime writer to pay attention to.” —David Morrell, New York Times best-selling author

“Joe Clifford's latest in the Jay Porter series is a tense, emotional tour de force ferried along on a mystery that's both timely and chilling. Don't miss this!” —Jamie Mason, author of Three Graves Full

“Clifford's edgy prose and masterful pacing, combined with flawed and profoundly human Jay Porter at the helm, make Broken Ground irresistible.” —Wendy Walker, author of Emma in the Night

“Joe Clifford writes with empathy, wisdom, and wicked wit about characters at the edge of society, sobriety, and their own tenuous sanity. Broken Ground is a feast, and Jay Porter is a unique noir hero who shines brightly in a dark world.” —Nick Petrie, author of Light It Up

Praise for the Jay Porter Series

“The writing snaps. The story crackles. The characters are achingly real.” —Meg Gardiner, Edgar Award-winning and best-selling author

“Gritty and gripping, with prose that cuts to the bone. Joe Clifford has crafted a modern noir that pulls no punches.” —Riley Sager, New York Times best-selling author

“Joe Clifford writes the kind of books that I love to read, mysteries that not only make you think, but make you feel. He is a master at creating characters that bind to your DNA and stay with you long after the last page is turned.” —Allen Eskens, USA Today best-selling author

From the Publisher

04/02/2018
Clifford’s depressing fourth Jay Porter novel (after 2017’s Give Up the Dead) finds Jay, a 36-year-old recovering alcoholic who suffers from panic attacks, attending an AA meeting in Ashton, N.H., where he can’t help noticing Amy Lupus, an attractive woman about his age. Jay clears estates for a living, but Amy is aware that he does investigative work on the side and asks him to locate her missing sister, Emily. Emily, a drug user, is supposed to be at the Coos County Center, a new rehab facility in town, but she left. Jay reluctantly agrees to help, knowing he’s headed for trouble because the center was built by his old enemies, brothers Adam and Michael Lombardi. Jay’s nerve is soon tested when the first person he talks to about Emily gets stabbed in the neck with a screw driver. The inconclusive ending promises that Jay’s fight with the Lombardis is far from over. Clifford breaks no new ground in this downbeat crime thriller. Agent: Elizabeth Kracht, Kimberly Cameron & Assoc. (June)

Publishers Weekly

2018-03-06
An alcoholic estate clearer without an investigator's license agrees anyway to search for a missing addict who's anything but.Halfway through his life, Jay Porter already seems to have blown it all. An ex-insurance claims investigator, ex-drinker, and ex-husband, he's fighting to stay sober and avoid becoming an ex-father to Aiden, the 6-year-old son whose custody he lost when his marriage ended. When his high school classmate Amy Lupus emerges from the shadows of an AA meeting to ask him to look for her sister Emily, who checked out of the Coos County Center against medical advice, Porter (Give Up the Dead, 2017, etc.) doesn't think of the job as another chance at redemption, or even as a fat paycheck, but as chance to stick it to Adam and Michael Lombardi, the politically ambitious brothers who run the Coos County Center. For what it's worth, he's right about the redemption part. He has no trouble figuring out that Emily was faking her addiction in order to get access to the Lombardis' facility for an exposé she was writing under the mentorship of Paul Grogan, a reporter for the Berlin Patch. But that's where the trail ends. Grogan's no longer working for the Patch; Emily is found with her neck broken at the base of Lamentation Mountain; and the only person Porter ends up getting close to is his client, with whom he enjoys some torrid interludes before she and Dan, the heroin-using boyfriend who wants to be called Hooch, are found dead of overdoses themselves. With so many of the frail ties holding him to Earth severed, Porter's chances of exposing the nasty doings of the Lombardi brothers look slimmer than ever.The lack of surprise, suspense, and even much action makes this entry more depressing than cathartic. Give Clifford an A for alcoholic rumination, B-minus for character development, and D for plotting.

Kirkus Reviews