Colorado Boulevard: A Crush Mystery

by Phoef Sutton

Overview

The first in an action-packed, humor-filled mystery/thriller series perfect for fans of Lee Child's Jack Reacher

"A smart, noirish mystery loaded with clever dialogue and vivid characters. The Crush series is as good as it gets."
— Kirkus (starred review)

When Zerbe, the honorary brother (and roommate) of LA’s toughest bodyguard/bouncer, Crush, is kidnapped, Crush springs into action to save him. Unraveling the mystery takes him to Zerbe’s estranged billionaire father, who’s obsessed with building California’s long-promised bullet train, as well as to Pasadena’s famed Rose Parade along Colorado Boulevard. This third installment in the Crush series (both of which were Kirkus Best Mysteries of the Year) is full of action, humor, and mystery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781945551154
Publisher:	Turner Publishing Company
Publication date:	12/12/2017
Series:	Crush Mysteries , #3
Pages:	292
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Phoef Sutton is a New York Times–bestselling novelist, television writer, and playwright whose work has won two Emmys, a Peabody, a Writers Guild Award, a GLAAD Award, and a Television Academy Honors Award. All three novels in the Crush series, Crush, Heart Attack and Vine, and Colorado Boulevard were Kirkus Best Mysteries of the Year. Crush was also a Los Angeles Times “Summer Reading Page-Turner” and Heart Attack and Vine was a "Ten Best Mystery of 2016" for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Sutton has been an executive producer of Cheers, a writer/producer for such shows as Boston Legal and NewsRadio, a writer for Terriers, the writer of six TV movies for Hallmark Movies and Mystery Channel including the Darrow & Darrow series, and the creator of several TV shows including the cult hit Thanks. He is also the co-author, with Janet Evanovich, of two New York Times bestsellers, Curious Minds and Wicked Charms. His other novels include the supernatural ghost story From Away and the romantic thriller 15 Minutes to Live. Sutton lives with his wife and two daughters in South Pasadena, California, and Vinalhaven, Maine. Learn more at phoefsutton.com

Editorial Reviews

So big, bald, and brutal was he that we took him to our hearts at once… exceptionally fine writing."
— Booklist

"A smart, noirish mystery loaded with clever dialogue and vivid characters. The Crush series is as good as it gets."
— Kirkus (starred review)

“Man, these Crush novels just keep getting better and better. Crush is like Jack Reacher with a hair up his ass. And the Los Angeles that Sutton writes about is the secret Los Angeles that nobody knows and everybody wants to know. Sutton answers questions about the city that I didn't even know I had.”
— Hart Hanson, author of The Driver and creator of Bones

“Welcome to the Pasadena you won’t find in the guidebooks as Phoef Sutton puts you in the shotgun seat with the tough and terse Crush in the cold-eyed Colorado Boulevard.”
— Gary Phillips, editor of The Obama Inheritance: 15 Stories of Conspiracy Noir

“A family saga meets thriller on the streets of Pasadena—Colorado Boulevard is the best Crush book yet!”
— Naomi Hirahara, Edgar-winning author of the Mas Arai and Ellie Rush mystery series

“Caleb Rush, AKA Crush, has a history riveted with dangerous living: soldier, drifter, bodyguard, recovering alcoholic, and “friend bro” to his hapless stepbrother, K.C. Zerbe. When K.C. is kidnapped, Crush sets off on a madcap ride through Pasadena and environs to rescue him. Car crashes, concussions, nail-biting suspense, and a cast of quirky characters…Colorado Boulevard has it all. But it’s Crush’s humor and humanity that highlight the resilience of the human spirit and make this story soar.”
— Patricia Smiley, Los Angeles Times–bestselling author of Pacific Homicide.

From the Publisher

10/02/2017
Sutton’s enjoyable third novel featuring macho L.A. bodyguard Caleb “Crush” Rush (after 2016’s Heart Attack and Vine) centers on the eccentric Zerbes, an old-money Pasadena family, whose patriarch, Emil, was once briefly married to Crush’s mother. The trouble begins when two kidnappers show up early one morning at the 12th-floor apartment that Crush shares with Emil’s son K.C., who’s under house arrest after serving time in prison for an unspecified crime. Crush, who considers K.C. a brother, arrives home just in time to grab one of the kidnappers, but not before his confederate gets away with K.C. in the building’s elevator. The captured man swears that K.C. hired them to kidnap him. To Crush, it’s obvious that K.C.’s twin, Noel, was responsible. Besides trying to deal with the zany brothers, Crush must also contend with their volatile sister, Angela, and the hoopla surrounding the Zerbes’ extravagant float for the Rose Parade, a celebration of California high-speed rail. Fans of comic capers will find plenty to like. Agent: Allison Cohen, Gersh Agency. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2017-09-19
Teenage Caleb Rush crawls out of a brontosaurus's butt in the latest of the crime series including Crush (2015) and Heart Attack and Vine (2016).Caleb sits at the controls of a brontosaurus tail in the Age of Fossil Fuels float that his rich stepuncle, Victor Zerbe, drives in Pasadena's 2001 Tournament of Roses Parade. Victor shoots himself in the head, and the float runs off the road. That "spectacular suicide" echoes 17 years later, when petty criminal K.C. Zerbe is kidnapped while under house arrest. K.C. is Caleb's ex-stepbrother, and Caleb is now known on the street as Crush. Crush's ex-stepfather, Emil Zerbe, dreams of creating his legacy, a high-speed rail from LA to San Francisco, and certain people will do anything to stop him. Meanwhile, K.C.'s identical twin, Noel, is in a group called Targeted Individuals that believes that sinister forces—"They"—want to control people's minds. The likable Crush doesn't dominate this manic story, but he's always in the middle, meaning he takes plenty of hits to the head. A doctor examines him and asks "What's three times twenty-four?" Crush replies "Mike Pence," answering a previous question. The pages are peppered with crazy people, and Crush isn't exempt. Noel tells "Jack," the kidnapper he hired, "I don't know if you've behaved ethically," and a friend tells Noel, "You should give him a bad Yelp review under ‘Kidnappers.'" Crush encounters a bomb with red and blue wires, just as in Homeland or 24, and he snips them both. "Then the bomb went off," with unexpected results. Overlords, Lancaster, California's Civic Musical Road, and a volley of arrows help nicely resolve the oddball, thoroughly entertaining plot.A smart, noirish mystery loaded with clever dialogue and vivid characters. The Crush series is as good as it gets.

Kirkus Reviews