Created by Gary Earl Ross
Huh?
Being Canadian, I always thought “Nickel City” was a nickname for Sudbury.
The hard rock town in northern Ontario that Murray McLauchlan sang about, the place whose most significant monument is, in fact, a giant Canadian nickel, symbolizing the area’s nickel mining history.
A rough town, a tough town.
But to Americans, I guess it means another rough town, tough town.
They (including writer Gary Earl Ross) mean Buffalo, New York. A Rust Belt city perpetually on the cusp of a Renaissance.
And Ross has used the “Nickel City” tag in the title of each of his four novels, a collection and a short story featuring rough, tough GIDEON RIMES, a Black Iraq War vet and retired Army CID detective who’s traded it all for the nice, quiet life of being a low-level private eye in Buffalo, serving subpoenas, tracking down witnesses, and providing background checks. No muss, no fuss. Better pay and nobody trying to kill him.
Yeah, right…
In four novels, he finds himself up to his neck in crazed stalkers, blackmailers, hot-headed cops, drive-by shooters, corrupt politicos, white supremacists, immigration agents, crooked cops, organized crime, a serial killer, and, yep, plenty of murder.
Good thing he held on to his trusty Glock.
Now if he can only hold on to his feisty new girlfriend, Phoenix Trinidad, one of the city’s leading defense lawyers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edgar Award-winning playwright, novelist, public radio essayist, popular culture scholar, actor, director, and audiobook narrator, Gary Earl Ross retired in 2013 from a language arts professorship at the University at Buffalo Educational Opportunity Center. He’s published more than 200 short stories, poems, essays, and scholarly papers, and has won numerous awards for his writing and teaching. His books include The Wheel of Desire and Other Intimate Hauntings, Shimmerville: Tales Macabre and Curious, Dots, Blackbird Rising: A Novel of the American Spirit, WordCraft, A Concise Handbook for the Everyday Writer, the Nickel City detective series, and Beneath the Ice and Other Stories. His public radio essays encouraged him to narrate his own audiobooks for the Rimes series. An avid reader, film buff, bicyclist, gamer, and occasional actor and director, Gary Earl Ross is the father of five adult children and lives in Buffalo, New York.
NOVELS
- Nickel City Blues (2021) | Buy this book | Buy the audio | Kindle it!
- Nickel City Crossfire (2021) | Buy this book | Buy the audio | Kindle it!
- Nickel City Storm (2021) | Buy this book | Buy the audio | Kindle it!
- Nickel City Naked Lady (2022 | Buy this book | Buy the audio | Kindle it!
SHORT STORIES
- “Nickel City Sanctuary” (2021; digital) | Kindle it!
COLLECTIONS
- The Gideon Rimes Collection, Books 1-3 (2021) | Buy the audio | Kindle it!
- | Buy this book | Buy the audio | Kindle it!
Not quite a collection of Rimes stories, it also includes “
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- A New York State of Mind
Empire State Eyes
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
