Brad Parks [has] delivered a first-rate crime thriller....Faces of the Gone is gritty and hard boiled, but with a sly sense of humor. This strong and confident debut is sure to make an appearance on many 'best of' and awards lists. Parks is a bright new talent whom readers will hopefully be able to enjoy for years to come.” —David J. Montgomery, Chicago Sun-Times
“[A] commanding, entertaining debut...Faces of the Gone skillfully mixes a gritty hard-boiled mystery with swatches of broad humor that perfectly captures the newsroom culture….Parks' Faces of the Gone ranks with Michael Connelly's The Scarecrow in its depiction of the newspaper industry. Parks, a former reporter at the Star-Ledger in Newark, shows he's made the transition to becoming a novelist with this impressive debut.” —Oline H. Cogdill, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
“This is the most hilariously funny and deadly serious mystery debut since Janet Evanovich's One for the Money. Former journalist Parks has learned the art of making words flow and dialog zing. Fans of the NFL's Cleveland Browns will find the Brick City Browns street gang an added delight.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“The story and characters make Faces of the Gone a success; the plot plays out with twists, and the characters are drawn with realism. Parks has begun his projected series with a bang.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch
“This terrific page-turning debut features a likeable protagonist, engaging supporting characters and some witty and amusing dialogue. Readers will want to see where this compelling tale takes them.” —RT Book Reviews (4 stars)
“Parks' writing is graceful and often gripping, and he creates a handful of vivid characters, both journalists and their sources. His portraits of the city and its drug trade, the newspaper, and Carter's journalistic techniques all sound knowing....this could develop into a solid series.” —Booklist
Parks's entertaining debut introduces an appealing hero, 31-year-old investigative reporter Carter Ross of the Newark (N.J.) Eagle-Examiner. When the bodies of four men, “each with a single bullet wound in the back of the head,” turn up in a vacant lot, Ross doesn't buy the police theory that the quadruple homicide was the result of a bar robbery gone bad. Despite his white upper-class background, Ross works the streets well, if not fearlessly, in his search for a link among the victims. Parks ratchets up the tension by occasionally interjecting the viewpoint of “the Director,” who orchestrated the slayings. Colorful supporting characters plus Ross's grit and determination keep the story moving at a good clip. Parks, a former print journalist himself, knows his way around a newsroom as the laments for the newspaper industry and the digs at TV reporters attest. Readers are likely to figure out the shadowy Director's identity before the intrepid reporter, but this is a quibble. (Dec.)
When Newark newspaper reporter Carter Ross tries to uncover the reason why four people were shot execution-style in an empty lot, he digs deep into the city's underbelly and along the way meets a string of vivid characters who could only come from urban New Jersey. VERDICT This is the most hilariously funny and deadly serious mystery debut since Janet Evanovich's One for the Money. Former journalist Parks has learned the art of making words flow and dialog zing. Fans of the NFL's Cleveland Browns will find the Brick City Browns street gang an added delight. [Library marketing campaign.]\
Hungry reporter chases a scoop to die for. Though Carter Ross, an investigative journalist at the Newark Eagle-Examiner, is only 31, he's unabashedly retrograde. He loves the newspaper game with old-school zeal, the kind that sent Stanley scampering off to darkest Africa in search of Dr. Livingstone. Carter's credo-get it fast, but get it right-explains why he has his back up about the way his paper has decided to play Newark's latest big story of multiple murder. Singular murder would hardly rate a snore in one of the busiest homicide capitals in the world, but four corpses gets everyone's attention. Three men and a woman have been found in a vacant lot, executed gangland style, a bullet in the back of each head. A cop's tip has sent the Eagle-Examiner bustling down a path that gives Carter a bad feeling. Instinct, however, is merely instinct, prosaic editors are famous for insisting. The burden of proof is on Carter, who must turn detective if he wants to set the record straight. What linked the unfortunate four? Why was that connection so unsettling to someone so obviously powerful? And who signed the four death warrants? Ace reporter/bulldog sleuth Carter will sniff out the answers if it kills him. Which it almost does, of course. A first novel with a seriously overstuffed plot but a very engaging hero.
