Product Description

With his first novel, the Shamus Award-winner The Innocents, and his acclaimed follow-ups, Bearing Secrets and The Ghosts of Morning, Richard Barre has emerged as "one of the best hardboiled detective novelists of the '90's" (San Francisco Chronicle Book Review). Now, with Blackheart Highway, he takes the genre for the ride of its life. Southern California PI Wil Hardesty makes a living searching for the truth. But this search always seems to draw him back to his own troubled past, shadowed by loss. His latest case takes him into the life of Doc Whitney, a country music star who was found guilty of killing his wife and young daughters twenty years ago. Now Doc has been paroled. In a town divided over his release, two people with very different agendas recruit Wil. One wants Doc gone-permanently. The other is convinced of his innocence. Now Wil must reconstruct a life, and track down a killer. And survive...

"Haunting, compelling and beautifully written." -Harlan Coben, author of One False Move

"An absorbing, amusing thrill ride." -Santa Barbara Independent

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2824540 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 326 pages

From Booklist
Doc Whitney has just done a 20-year prison stretch for the brutal murders of his wife and children. Now he's on parole and back in Bakersfield, his hometown and scene of the murders. Luke DiVilbiss, a powerful local attorney, hires private investigator Wil Hardesty to determine why Whitney is harassing DiVilbiss' family. Hardesty doesn't like what he learns. Whitney may have been framed for the 20-year-old murders, and DiVilbiss, in concert with the local cops, may have been part of the conspiracy. When Whitney is killed, Hardesty embarks on a quixotic quest to clear Whitney's name, and it nearly costs him his own life. Shamus-winner Barre evokes the ever-present past as a melancholy backdrop against which Hardesty works his lone-wolf magic. This is a rising series that--despite its generally somber tone--is beginning to include touches of very welcome humor. Wes Lukowsky

From Kirkus Reviews
Nineteen years ago, country music star Don Lee (``Doc'') Whitney was arrested for killing his fourth wife and their two daughters and telling the police he was too drunk to remember a thing; five years ago, long after he'd been sentenced on three counts of manslaughter, he found out that his father Gib, the oilman who'd vanished when he was still a teenager, had been spending all that time in a sumphole with a bullet in his head. Now Doc's been released back into California's Central Valley, and wealthy Luther DeVillbis, Gib's one-time partner, wants to hire Wil Hardesty (The Ghosts of Morning, 12998, etc.) to talk some sense into Doc before he comes gunning for Lute. But the two p.i.'s Lute had already hired to do the job get killed instead, and suddenly Wil's swapped jobs and clients: he's now helping Doc's ex-wife Jenelle Lockhart prove that the wild man's innocent of the latest shotgunnings. As time will tell, the complications have only begun, as has the death toll (one of Barre's many borrowings from The Big Sleep is the elevated body count; another is the ubiquitous power of professional criminals everybody abhors who manage to make their way into the back rooms of the rich anyway). The result is something for everyone: sex and drugs, love spurned and faithful, strong men and stronger women, and enough dastardly plotters to people a circle of hell. Barre swings for the fences once more with this sprawling, convoluted blast from the past, though the total effect is like an overdose of tiramisu, gunpowder, or guilt. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
"Explodes into our senses in a perfect balance of action, suspense and emotion...The sheer beauty and strength of Barre's writing gives Blackheart Highway a glow of redemption that's extremely rare in any kind of fiction." -- Chicago Tribune

"One of the best hard-boiled detective novelists." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"The legitimate heir to Ross Macdonald." -- Chicago Tribune

Customer Reviews

Barre's best so far!
Richard Barre has done it again with his latest novel Blackheart Highway. I started reading this author after a trip to Bouchercon where I heard him read an excerpt from one of his novels. After that I read The Innocents and Bearing Secrets in short order and waited anxiously for The Ghosts of the Morning. Blackheart Highway is Mr. Barres fourth offering and in some ways his best.

One of the most compelling aspects of Richard Barre's writing is the subtle quality of the plot. The characters and events are believable while the feeling of the story has a haunting timbre. As the story progresses the line between villain and victim start to blur as Will finds himself embroiled in much more than vague threats or long ago murders. I am struck by Mr. Barre's understanding of the "little evils" of compromise and need that seem to be the foundation for the monstrous wickedness.

I liked this book very much and liked even more the time between readings. The flavor of the story lingered and I found myself wanting to hurry up and finish whatever silliness I was doing so I could get back to the real stuff of Blackheart Highway.

Michaele Bryant

Terrific read, fascinating characters, multi-level plot.
For anyone who likes spending time with characters and plots that resonate well after the last page is turned, Richard Barre is the author for you. Blackheart Highway, brings the fascinating Wil Hardesty roaring back to life for the fourth time. Barre's writing is spare and exquisitely elegant, his plots are complex and ultimately satisifying. No one writes more realistic and wonderfully rounded characters. I'll follow Wil Hardesty and Richard Barre wherever they will take me. It is a darn good read, but then so were The Innocents, Bearing Secrets, and The Ghosts of Morning. Don't start any of these books late at night, you won't be able to put them down.

A stunning achievement, bound to one day be a classic!
Spare, economical tight writing. A complext multi-generational plot. PI Wil Hardesty goes to Bakersfield with a woman he's getting serious about. It's to be a vacation, but after thwarting a robbery, Hardesty is offered a large amount of money to find a recently released and former country western singer who's back in town. There's more to it, and as Hardesty probes deeper, more and more questions arise. This is an outstanding novel without a wasted word. Plots and subplots intertwine with spiraling tension to a very high level. This one is a grabber you'll want to read in a single setting.