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The Last Kind Words

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
From award-winning author Tom Piccirilli comes what Lee Child calls “perfect crime fiction,” a wholly original novel introducing the Rands, a vipers’ nest of crooks and cons, one generation stealing from the next. Upon the razor-thin edge between love and violence lives a pair of brothers, their bonds frayed by betrayals and guilt, their loyalty to each other their last salvation.
Raised to pick a pocket before he could walk, Terry Rand cut free from his family after his older brother, Collie, went on a senseless killing spree that left eight dead. Five years later, only days before his scheduled execution, Collie contacts Terry and asks him to return home. Collie claims he wasn’t responsible for one of the murders—and insists that the real killer is still on the loose.
Dogged by his own demons, Terry is swept back into the schemes and scams of his family: His father, Pinsch, a retired cat burglar, brokenhearted because of his two sons. His card-sharp uncles, Mal and Grey, who’ve incurred the anger of the local mob. His grandfather, Shep, whose mind is failing but whose fingers can still slip out a wallet  from across the room. His teenage sister, Dale, who’s flirting dangerously with the lure of the family business. And Kimmie, the woman Terry abandoned, who’s now raising a child with Terry’s former best friend.  
Terry pieces together the day his brother turned rabid, delving into a blood history that reveals the Rand family tree is rotten to the roots, and the secrets his ancestors buried are now coming furious and vengeful to the surface.
A meditation on how love can confine a person just as easily as it can free him, juxtaposing shocking violence and sly humor, The Last Kind Words is the brilliantly inventive family saga that only a singular talent like Tom Piccirilli could conjure.
Includes a preview of Tom Piccirilli’s next book, The Last Whisper in the Dark.
Praise for The Last Kind Words
 
“A crime noir mystery as hard-boiled as any in recent memory, recalling the work of Chandler, Pelecanos and Connelly . . . Readers literally will be pinned to their seats until the last page is turned.”—Bookreporter
 
“At once a dark and brooding page-turner and a heartfelt tale about the ties that bind.”—Lisa Unger, New York Times bestselling author of Heartbroken
 
“[A] caustic thriller . . . The characters have strong voices and bristle with funny quirks.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“[Piccirilli] deserves a breakout novel, and this just might be it.”—Booklist (starred review)
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 23, 2012
      At the start of this sharp slice of contemporary noir from Thriller Award–winner Piccirilli (You’d Better Watch Out), retired second-story-man Terrier Rand, who’s been trying to put his family’s work as professional thieves behind him while ranching out west, has returned east to see his older brother, Collie. Collie is about to be executed for the cold-blooded murder of eight people five years before, though he claims one of those kills wasn’t his. When Terrier starts digging through the evidence, he finds inconsistencies that suggest a serial killer may have been using Collie’s killing spree to cover up his own. Piccirilli’s mastery of the hard-boiled idiom is pitch perfect, particularly in the repartee between his characters, while the picture he paints of the criminal corruption conjoining the innocent and guilty in a small Long Island community is as persuasive as it is seamy. Readers who like a bleak streak in their crime fiction will enjoy this well-wrought novel. Agent: David Hale Smith, DHS Literary.

    • Kirkus

      May 1, 2012
      Summoned home by an urgent plea from his kid sister, a runaway brother finds his family of thieves just as dysfunctional and even more criminal. Collie Rand has run out of time. Condemned to death after a murder spree that claimed eight innocent lives, he has a date with the needle in two weeks. And although there's precious little love between him and his brother Terrier (yes, all the Rands are named after dog breeds), he has one thing he wants to impress on Terry: He didn't strangle teenager Rebecca Clarke. Collie doesn't claim his innocence; he can't explain what made him kill all those people after a short life devoted entirely to stealing from his Long Island neighbors; he just wants Terry to know that he only went seven for eight. Since Detective Gilmore's not likely to be any more help than Terry's father Pinscher or his uncles Malamute and Greyhound, Terry has to go it alone in his inquiries. Wondering all the while why he's laboring to exonerate a brother who freely admits his guilt in seven homicides, Terry scrutinizes the records collected by Collie's jailhouse bride Lin, purloins the case files from Gilmore's office, and watches his teenage sister Dale's highly unsuitable involvement with penny-ante hood Joe Cassidy, who, styling himself Butch, plots a robbery that's clearly out of his league. The results are more murder, some harsh truths about the Rand family, and a searing examination of the ties that bind brother to brother. Consigning most of the violence to the past allows Piccirilli (The Fever Kill, 2007, etc.) to dial down the gore while imparting a soulful, shivery edge to this tale of an unhappy family that's assuredly unhappy in its own special way.

      COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Library Journal

      February 1, 2012

      Bram Stoker and International Thriller Writers Award winner Piccirilli breaks into hardcover with the story of Terrier Rand, who abandons the crime life and his small-time grifter family when brother Collie turns killer and wipes out an entire family and then some. (Yes, Rand family members are all named after dog breeds.) But he returns when Collie claims that he wasn't responsible for one of those deaths. Lots of buzz and the start of a new series.

      Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from May 1, 2012
      Terry Rand has been working out west, trying to forget a troubled past. He comes home to Long Island, though, at the request of his big brother, Collie, who's running out of time on death row. The Rands have been thieves for generations but don't carry guns, which made Collie's killing spree all the more baffling. Collie admits to seven murders but tells Terry someone else did the eighthand begs him to find the culprit. The remarkable originality of this book becomes apparent the moment the reader realizes the Rands are all named after dogs, from Terry (terrier) and Collie to uncles Mal (malamute) and Grey (greyhound). And the family house, its hidden rooms and compartments filled with unfenced junk from previous scores, adds a sense of gothic dysfunction to the tale. As Terry chases Collie's ghosts, he wrestles with his own failings, his family's past, and his fears for what he might become. There are minor flaws in the plotting and pacing, but readers who respond to characters, voice, and atmosphere won't care a bit: Piccirilli has created a world so real you can smell the mildew. After writing crime and horror for presses well known and obscure, he deserves a breakout novel, and this just might be it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

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