Death Call hits a high point!

I'm humbled and delighted.


Death Call, written in the heady days of 1996 and published for the first time in paperback in 1997, has just climbed mysteriously high in the UK in eBook format.


At the last count it was number 11 in Books > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > British Detectives

To quote our friend and crime novelist extraordinaire Declan Burke over on Crime Always Pays, here are the words of the wee blurb elves....

"It was all he could do to stop his hangover from spilling out onto the victim as he studied her neck and what he made out to be the initial puncture wound in her abdomen. From that point, he thought, she had been opened like an envelope with a paper knife, revealing a mess of entrails and blood.

With a deranged serial killer on the loose, Detective Sergeant Dan Carroll and his new partner Detective Constable Samuel Grant find themselves trawling the seedy side of London in search of a brutal killer who preys on prostitutes.

A Shot of Modern Noir.

T.S. O'Rourke's writing has been declared powerful, beautiful and hard-boiled by both readers and critics alike."

If you like hard-boiled London-based serial killer stories that come with a sense of humour, a smattering of steamy sex and a little social commentary on the state of the underbelly, then you might like this. And for those of you that do, you might also like Death Call's follow-up, Damned Nation (which has also spiked in terms of sales recently, I'm delighted to say).

Here's the UK link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003X978GO
And for the rest of the world, via Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003X978GO

Thank you all!

Review: "A Noir Streak as Deep as a Femme Fatale's Cleavage"

I just recently received a very gratifying review over on amazon.com for my novelette Candy Says Kill, which I've copied and pasted below, with another earlier review below it...

4.0 out of 5 stars Mick Says Cool: A Shot of Unruly Review, January 12, 2012

By 

M. Halpin (Dublin Ireland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Candy Says Kill: A Shot of Modern Noir (Kindle Edition)

I read Candy Says Kill yesterday in two sittings- it's a jawbreaker. (That's a candy that lasts a good long while, for anyone not familiar.) Some of the layers: 
- New York hood, 
- backwoods beauty, 
- seedy bar, 
- cheap motel, 
- rednecks swinging axe handles, 
- roundhouse kicks, 
- stolen cars, 
- showercaps. 
- and blood. Lots and lots o' blood. 


T.S. O'Rourke has a Noir streak deep as any femme fatale's cleavage- and just as much fun. Reknowned Alabama Public Radio reviewer Don Noble would ask in wonder if the author has ever actually spent a night drinking with locals in an Alabama town, but Candy would just say Kill.

4.0 out of 5 stars Rusting quietly, March 29, 2011

By 

David H Fears - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Candy Says Kill: A Shot of Modern Noir (Kindle Edition)

This is a fast-paced, powerful short story that turns on a coincidence--a man who has killed before for money stops in a small Alabama town and the bartender's young and gorgeous wife takes him for the contract killer she ordered. His lust and experience lead him to take advantage of the situation, with some chilling and realistic dialog and action. They say every good short story could be a novel and every bad novel might be a short story. This is a good one, and God knows it's harder to write a good short story than a novel. I write hardboiled stuff and this one fits the bill nicely in a more modern setting. Well worth the price.

Candy Says Kill Free for just today!

Click here to avail of this promotional offer!

Ganglands update

I'm slowly but surely going through all the covers of my existing books and short stories trying apply a sense of order.
I'm not a great one for order or processes, so it will most likely take some time to get them all done....
Howsoever, to wit, herewith and without further ado, I present the updated Ganglands cover.

Hope y'all like it!

Sunset Strip: A Shot of Modern Noir

I've finally gotten around to finishing my latest novelette/novella Sunset Strip, set in L.A.

The story follows a man visiting L.A. on business as he picks up a beautiful Latina in a bar close to his hotel. The two hit it off after some initial foreplay and end up going to his room to get a little more 'comfortable'. What happens next is well.... unusual, to say the least.

Taking cues from the greats and adding a nice twist in the tail, this piece of Modern Noir will keep you guessing to the end.

You can find the book here!

Noir Shot Update... and Killing in print

http://www.lafterhall.com/filmnoir_001.html

I've finally gotten around to making Killing a Friend available in print via our good friends at Amazon's Createspace. So if eBooks ain't your thang you can now buy a paperback version. And very nice it is too.

You can find it here:
 http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Friend-T-S-ORourke/dp/1456515829

As far as my Hollywood Noir short shot of Noir is concerned I've been a busy wee hack and passed my usual finish line in terms of short story length. So it'll be a long short story or a short novella - maybe a shortella... I like that....

I'm hoping to have it finished, proofed and ready to rock into your Xmas stockings. But knowing me you'll not get it until January when you need something new to read on your Kindle Fire...

Killing a Friend - special winter warmer price for all my friends...

I've knocked down the price on my mainstream literary novel Killing a Friend just to give it a wee nudge forward.

I don't know why (maybe because I haven't used 'sex' or 'serial killer' in the any of the marketing blurb) but it hasn't really moved very well - despite getting a humdinger of a first review a few months back, where I was described as a 'Beautiful Literary Voice' (doesn't get much better for an old Noir Hack like me).

Anyway, I've updated the cover art and dropped the price and I can guarantee sex, death, betrayal, bisexuality, abortion and suicide in fairly ample doses.

Dip your toes in while it's on sale!

It's also a precursor to the second print edition which will be on sale shortly via Amazon and other select sales channels.

Killing a Friend on Amazon.com

Angel City

I've gotten off my proverbial fat ass and started to write a new shot of Noir, while my ongoing battle with my novel Flesh carries on...

I'll be basing this one in the U.S. - Los Angeles to be precise - the home of Noir in my most humble of opinions...

Given the locale and the history of Noir that the fine city of angles has given birth to, I'll be treading carefully on the hallowed grounds before me.

I've been to L.A. around five times now and I've been taking copious notes and building a story in my head for the last few months. Now the hard work begins... or should I say, now the hard work has BEGUN...

Watch this space for a new Shot of Modern Noir...

We can see the stars - especially from the gutter...

I've mentioned Out of the Gutter previously - and I couldn't help but mention them again.

In their latest edition we find the US and the UK slugging it out for the world championship in pulp fiction. We see top-grade lowlife writers such as Tony Black slugging it out with the likes of E.E. Howard and Julie Morgan.

If you like your fiction hard, heavy and a little on the moist side, Out of the Gutter will serve up a right hook, followed by a jab that will leave you with a grin that stretches from ear to ear, much like the type you might get in an old Glasgow pub on displaying the wrong attitude on a cool October Saturday night.

Keep smiling.., and click here...

Whatever happened to humanity?

I'm sitting here scratching my head in-between typing these words. I have no idea where time has flown, but it has been travelling at the speed of sound, or maybe, perhaps, silence.

My promises to keep up the pace on my work-in-progress have been broken by an overload of work and what people call real life. I know.

I have been doing some more research though, and feel a lot closer to that which I am writing about. I've been doing some reading, and an investigative journalist friend of mine put me in touch with some 'undesirables' that could add more than a passing air of legitimacy to my forthcoming tome....

Let's just say I hope you or your family never meet these people.

The social (perhaps more correct to call it the anti-social) underbelly of this world continues to draw me into its dark corners, where despair, brutality and humanity occupy the same shadows.

Sometimes I question my reasons for doing what I do - exposing myself to the worst side of humanity - when most of the people around me smile and continue to exhibit an openness and trust that I have long-since abandoned.

There is a parallel world. It is dark, disturbing, violent, sickening and all too real.

You can read about some elements of this world in my bestselling short shots collection, Why I Kill. And just remember this - truth is always stranger than fiction. I hope fiction is as close as you get.

Sleep tight.