Jack Marconi

Created by Vincent Zandri

Now here’s a former occupation you don’t hear of often for private eyes. When we first meet him, in the rip-snorting, well-praised series debut, As Catch Can (1999), JACK MARCONI is a grieving widower whose nickname is “The Keeper.” He earned that monicker from his time as the hard-nosed warden of Green Haven, a maximum security prison in upstate New York.

But following the escape of an infamous cop killer under his command, related in that book, and the resulting scandal and fallout, both emotional and legal, he’s out on the bricks, looking for work. By the time of the second book in the series, Godchild (2000), rolls around, he’s a private eye, trying to make a go of his second marriage, although he’s still obsessed with the death of his first wife in a brutal car accident years ago — which somehow leads to him setting out to spring an American writer from a notorious Mexican prison.

He’s since appeared in a couple more novels and a short story and, well, nobody can claim Jack (or his sometime sidekick “Blood”) is leading a dull life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The only thing more overheated than Vincent Zandri ‘s books may be his talent for BSP — everywhere I turn, I get the breathless hard sell, where he’s constantly compared to Michael Connelly, Harlan Coben, Joe Landsdale, Charlie Huston, John D. MacDonald, Robert B. Parker, and one book even sports the subtitle “A Gripping Hard-Boiled Mystery.” But it all seems to have worked out for him — he claims he’s become a New York Times, USA Today, and “Amazon Overall No. 1 Thriller” bestseller, and has nabbed both Shamus and an ITW Thriller awards. Originally a reporter for New York Newsday and The Times-Union in Albany, New York and the holder of an MFA from Vermont College, he currently lives in upstate New York, where he’s churned out a slew of hard-charging, hard-boiled novels and short stories over the last twenty years or so for assorted publishers, including Delacorte, Dell, Down & Out Books, Thomas & Mercer, Polis Books and himself. Most feature tough guy detectives of one sort or another. Along the way he’s accumulated blurbs from Don Winslow, Harlan Coben, Dick Adler, Publishers Weekly, BookList, The Boston Herald, The San Diego Union-Tribune and The New York Post. He also has series about Chase Baker, a modern day “Renaissance Man,” an Indiana Jones-style adventurer/private eye who lives in Florence, Italy; Dick Moonlight, a “black leather coat-clad PI” with a bullet in his head and Steve Jobz, an investigator for the New York State Department of Unemployment Insurance Fraud. All of them seem to have problems keeping their pants zipped.

UNDER OATH

  • “Vincent Zandri explodes onto the scene with the debut thriller of the year. As Catch Can is gritty, fast-paced, lyrical and haunting. Don’t miss it.”
    — Harlan Coben
  • “(As Catch Can) is a tough, stylish, heartbreaking car accident of a book: You don’t want to look but you can’t look away. Zandri’s a terrific writer and he tells a terrific story.”
    — Don Winslow

NOVELS

SHORT STORIES & NOVELLAS

  • “Dressed to Kill” (February 2017, digital) | Kindle it!

RELATED LINKS

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.

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