Crime fiction is my first and best reading love. The genre is so expansive that it welcomes sleuths of all stripes (literally in the case of cat mysteries). What I most love about crime novels is how they introduce me to new worlds and shows the way into how we live now and how societies function (or more often, don't). When chaos surrounds us in real life, even fictional chaos offers a much needed escape for the tired, despairing reader. And when you're guided on a tour of dark doings and double dealings by the likes of Patrick Hoffman, the jolts are all the more electric and the windows into secret places resonate all the more.

Hoffman worked as a private investigator in San Francisco and now in Brooklyn. As a result, Every Man a Menace rings true, whether or not the action happens in the Bay Area, Miami, or Bangkok. The drug called Ecstasy in my youth '“ now known as 'œMolly' '“ unites all of the characters, whether they are snorting it, selling it, stealing it, or getting killed for it. For a drug that professes to give pleasure, the pain is major-league.

As for plot, imagine a younger, edgier Elmore Leonard, a pinch of _Pulp Fiction_ and a dose of Traffic, and you get the idea. There are plenty of cautionary tales here, but Hoffman is no moralizer'” the thrills and kills always come first. And Hoffman’s voice '“ knowing, wry, caustic, but not too cynical '“ always held my attention. Crime fiction thrives on fresh voices above all, and Hoffman is one of the freshest out there at the moment. I can't wait to see what secret world he lets us in on next.