Devil With A Gun
A Dixie Flynn Mystery
M.C. Grant
Midnight Ink, October 2013
ISBN 978-0-7387-3499-6
Trade Paperback
Dixie Flynn is a journalist for a San Francisco newspaper. She’s known for getting the story, even if she has to bend a few rules and put herself in danger to do it. When the new boss demands she write a Father’s Day fluff piece, she rebels–not unusual–and picks up on a story of a father gone missing many years in the past. One daughter wants to know what happened to her father, whom she remembers fondly. A second daughter, thrown into a life of abuse and prostitution, blames the father and doesn’t care. Altogether, a Father’s Day story worthy of Dixie’s talents.
There’s another problem. The missing father has a connection to a notorious Russian mobster and he doesn’t take kindly to Dixie nosing around.
Dixie walks right into danger, although she’s not alone in her search for a good story. She’s a woman with a number of offbeat friends and allies, for instance, a bookie known as Eddie the Wolf; her drinking buddy Frank, a SFP detective; Benny, who keeps her in guns. But most valuable in this caper is Pinch, a jockey-sized hitman who’ll do anything to keep Dixie alive.
Lots of brutality in this one, but the violence is tempered with humor. Fast paced, twisty, the story will keep you turning pages. The bad guys, even the Russian mobster, are well-drawn and interesting in their own right. I might even call them quirky, a label generally reserved for the good guys.
Dixie is a great character. This is the first mystery featuring her I’ve read, but I hope there are many more in the works.
Reviewed by Carol Crigger, April 2014.
Author of Three Seconds to Thunder.
Buried Under Books 
Sounds a little like a come back of Dashiell Hammett’s character, Sam Spade, only a female version and a reporter, not detective. Reading this review I could feel those streets of San Francisco coming alive again. The addition of a Russian mobster is the kind of foreign character Hammett would throw in to make his story even more exciting.
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Devil With A Gun is the second book in a series starring Dixie Flynn. The first book is Angel With A Bullet, and the third, being published by Midnight Ink in September, is Beauty With A Bomb.
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I see you write under a pen name. There’s nothing better than picturing a setting in San Francisco. My first book, also a series is just now under contract, so you are ahead of me. Good going. I’ll go onto Amazon and look for your first book, Angel with a bullet.
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Thanks, Linda – and congratulations on your series. Yes, I write the Dixie Flynn books under a pen name (since they are a first-person-female series) and write stand-alone, edge-of-your-seat thrillers under my own name that are most often compare to Harlan Coben and Linwood Barclay.
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I just finished a book and was going to start a Lee Childs, Jack Reacher book. Since Amazon has mailed my order of your first book, I think I’ll wait and read yours instead. I’ve read a couple of the Jack Reacher series, but now yours.
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Thanks, Linda. That’s lovely to hear. Lee Child actually read and lived my thriller SWITCH and gave me a wonderful blurb for it.
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Wow, a blurb from Lee Childs! That’s great. I started reading the book – it will take a while as I’m so short of time right now. I was not expecting present tense, but it’s working fine. I’m only 3 chapters in. I like your character. She’s a little sassy or snorky – can’t quite come up with the right word.
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