Newman, Christopher

Hit and Run (Lt. Joe Dante Novels)

Detective Joe Dante lives in a downtown loft and hangs with an uptown crowd.  A cop who doesn't act, talk, or play like other cops, Dante's got Brooklyn-bred street smarts and a half-finished Ph.D. dissertation on his bookshelf.  But when a man is struck down by a car outside a posh Manhattan hotel, Dante is plunged into a world like no other he's ever seen.

The victim was a corporate executive.  The killer was a hit-and-run driver.  And when Dante and his team investigate the accident, they find a billion-dollar stock-market deal and the tracks of a Wall Street financier gone missing from his Sutton Place co-op.

Now Dante is putting together the jagged pieces of a puzzle of sex, money, ambition, and high-tech fraud.  It's a hunt that will take him from the pinnacle of high finance to Manhattan's meanest streets.  Because Detective Joe Dante is chasing a man who has a thirty-eight-million-dollar motive for murder--multiple murder--and the cunning to get away wit

Killer (Lt. Joe Dante Novels)

Midtown South

The rich, the poor, and the evil take on two New York cops in a gripping novel that rips the city wide open.

Chains of Command : Completed by Christopher Newman

An electrifying new thriller from The New York Times bestselling author, one of the originators of the big-city police novel

William J. Caunitz, the author of such classics as One Police Plaza and Exceptional Clearance, is back in bestselling form with his latest New York City cop thriller, Chains of Command. When a young police officer is shot and killed in his girlfriend's apartment in Washington Heights, investigators suspect that he had been taking money from the Dominican drug gangs that rule the neighborhood. An ambitious female deputy police commissioner and a daring detective lieutenant go up against the forces of greed, rivalry, and long-buried secrets to protect the ones they love and solve the crime of their careers. These two cops are the best of the true blue, brave, and loyal.

* Caunitz's first four novels were New York Times bestsellers

* Cleopatra Gold was a New York Times Notable Book in 1993

"He knows more about cops and what moves them [than] Joseph Wambaugh or George V. Higgins. Its special strength is its carefully exacting depiction of what the working life of a big-city police department really is like."--The New York Times Book Review (on One Police Plaza)

Manana Man

Dead End Game

Sounds Like Murder: Clean American Fun (Sounds Like Murder)

Christopher Newman's short mystery Clean American Fun mixes greed, corruption, lust, and murder to create an interestingly wicked plot set smack dab in the middle of the American heartland. This down-home setting suits the everyman's voice of narrator and actor Darrel Larson just fine as he calmly spins Newman's murderous tale.

The story begins as a ruthless English billionaire starts buying up property around Branson, Missouri, stepping on a lot of toes in the process. The local folks don't like this interloper one bit, and when the evidence in a particularly nasty murder points to the town's new and unwelcome neighbor, they like him even less. "The crime of which Hollister stood accused was heinous no matter how you sliced it: Amber Billingsley, a senior-to-be at Branson High, was found nude in a culvert near Table Rock Dam. Dead by strangulation." Before long, the media, politicos, and clergy stir things up, and it takes some serious sleuthing to uncover the whole sordid truth.

Larson uses his voice to its fullest, giving a satisfactory performance. He sometimes struggles with some of the character's accents, but since Newman has thrown everyone from a backwater Bubba to a British aristocrat into his melting pot of a cast, few narrators wouldn't. (Running time: two hours, one cassette) --George Laney

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler presents
Sounds Like Murder
Original, unabridged mysteries available on audio

1 cassette / 110 minutes
Unabridged
Read by Darrell Larson

"This is old-fashioned story-telling at its best.  Interesting and involving tales from some of the masters of mysteries."
-Michael Connelly, author of Blood Work


Three thousand acres next to Branson, Missouri, is a gold mine to the wealthy and eccentric Sir Reginald Hollister.  "Clean American Fun" could be the biggest theme park north of Disneyland.  There's one catch: when a woman is found murdered, all eyes and evidence point to Hollister.  But when two secret service agents arrive on the scene, suddenly politicians, actors, and an irreverent revered all have reason to dispense with "Clean American Fun."

Other titles in the SOUNDS LIKE MURDER series include:
Driving Lessons by Ed McBain
The Case of the Scottish Tragedy by June Thompson
The Poster Boy by Stephen Solomita
The Sedgemoor Stranger by Peter Lovesey
A Tale About a Tiger by S.J. Rozan

Knock-Off

The designer of the trend-setting new sportswear line of the Close Apparel label is found bludgeoned to death in the corporate offices. Missing items point to a piracy ring that could cost the company plenty. Still, Detective Joe Dante wonders whether cheap off-the-rack knock-offs are worth killing for. An arrogant U.S. Treasury Agent shows up and steps all over Dante's case. A beautiful model is targeted for death. For Joe Dante, there's a lot more at stake than the new fall line . . .

Backfire

In 1963, a beautiful young girl dies in the middle of an abortion on a cold table in a motel room. The cover-up is quick, quiet and -- for almost thirty years -- worth every penny. Now it's 1991. At the dawn of a presidential campaign, the old secret suddenly surfaces. To one man it means enormous profit. To a second man it means a lethal mystery. When the stakes are high, there are no loyalties and no rules -- even for top-level U.S. government agents. Especially for them.

Precinct Command

"Newmanis oneof the best in the business."
William J. Caunitz
Author of EXCEPTIONAL CLEARANCE
Even cynical New York City is rocked by the brutal murder of Congresswoman Cora Davis. Lt. Joe Dante's only suspect are the last two people to see Davis alive: the lead singer in the rock megaband Crucifixion and the wife of a right-wing Southern senator. As Dante is caught up in a tangle of hypocrisy and intrigue, angry NYPD brass are breathing down his neck, and he's up to his chin in blackmail, sex scandals, cover-ups and new bodies. If he doesn't crack this case, his badge is on the line--but trapping his vicious prey means putting himself in the line of fire....