Jury Box review of Detectives and Spies

 

In the March/April issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Steven Steinbock offers the following review of Detectives and Spies in his Jury Box column: Zeltserman, who has garnered multiple EQMM Readers Awards as well as the Derringer and Shamus awards, has brought together nine stories, the first four featuring an artificial-intelligence device called Archie Smith, followed by three stories about former L.A. cop Morris Brick and two hardboiled crime stories featuring Hell’s only private eye, Mike Stone. Most of the stories first appeared in EQMM or in its sister publication Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. My favorites are the stories about Archie, especially relevant with AI constantly in the news. Archie, a “highly-sophisticated neuron network,” serves as Watson to private eye Julius Katz in the first two stories, then is passed on to Katz’s sister, international spy Julia Katz, for the next two. Reading these tales is like playing a lively game of Clue, except with more colorful characters and an AI at your side.

PW on Everybody Lies In Hell

Publishers Weekly weighs in on my upcoming (Oct. 1st) EVERYBODY LIES IN HELL:

This clever depiction of hell explores the lies that people tell, both to others and to themselves. Mike Stone dies and wakes up in a flawed simulacrum of Brooklyn within the afterlife, created from his patchy memories. He passes eternity by acting as a private investigator for other people who are aware of being dead, finding out how they died or answering questions they still had from when they were alive. Stone moves among the hells created by stronger personalities, such as warlord Al Zaoud and the White Devil of Wallachia, and lesser ones, searching for answers for his clients, as well as for himself. Although the constant repetition of details occasionally grates, it doesn’t detract from the strength of the premise or the power of the story’s resolution. Zeltserman (Husk) has developed a rich world with a complex protagonist, and the stated stagnation of hellish eternity doesn’t stop his story from moving briskly along.

My next novel

My next novel EVERYBODY LIES IN HELL will be published by Eraserhead Press October 1st. From the back cover copy:

Hell can be a tricky place with all of its rules. Mike Stone, hell’s lone practicing private eye, thinks he has it figured out, and more often than not, solves the cases that come his way. It’s not easy, though. Not with the fact that everyone in hell lies. And not with having to worry about a barbaric warlord from a long-forgotten time after his head. Or a compatriot of Vlad the Impaler wanting to purify his soul in a chamber of horrors for all eternity. Or that his circa 1992 Brooklyn private hell might be absorbed at any moment by a more aware soul. And then there’s that creepy Mortuary Man and whatever his agenda might be.

When Stone takes on a young woman as a client who wants him to find out who murdered her, it turns out to be his most dangerous case yet, and what he discovers might just be Hell’s biggest secret.

"In Everybody Lies in Hell Mike Stone's eternal damnation is a private detective's office in a re-imagined Brooklyn. In Hell, the beautiful woman with a case opens a literal Pandora's Box, and Stone is soon inundated by all-too-recognizable evils and lies of Hell's tortured souls, powerful ancient demons and devils, and haunting personal ones. Classic pulp, noir, and horror--think James N. Cain and Bukowski and Palahniuk--are all ground up in a blender and the result is a nasty, wild, and ultimately redemptive novel that only Dave Zeltserman could write."
--Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts

"Everybody Lies in Hell is a wild adventure centered on confronting our demons--literally and figuratively. At once compulsively entertaining and bizarre, Zeltserman has written a metaphysical masterpiece. Hell has never been so much fun."

--Jon Bassoff, author of The Drive-Thru Crematorium

EVERYBODY LIES IN HELL is available for preordering now from Amazon.