Painted Gun

2018 Shamus Award Finalist: A "e;tricky and delightfully surprising crime novel"e; set at the dawn of the digital age in San Francisco (Publishers Weekly). It's 1997, and the dotcom boom is going strong in San Francisco. But ex-journalist and struggling alcoholic David "e;Itchy"e; Crane's fledgling "e;information consultancy"e; business is getting slowly buried by bad luck, bad decisions, and the growing presence of the Internet. Before he can completely self-destruct, a private investigator offers him fifty grand to find a missing girl named Ashley. Crane takes the job because the money's right and because the only clue to her disappearance is a dead-on oil portrait of Crane himself painted by the mysterious missing girl whom he has never met. As Crane's search for Ashley becomes an obsession, he stumbles upon a series of murders, for which he begins to fear he's being framed... "e;Spinelli deftly segues from one genre to another from hard-boiled noir to paranoid thriller, puzzle mystery (with each and every riddle logically explained), spy caper, and ultimately to something evocative of Bogart and Bacall. Spinelli is definitely a talent to watch."e; Publishers Weekly"e;A neat little post-modern mash-up of Chandler and Hammett...[Spinelli's] got wit and style up the wazoo."e; Thrilling Detective"e;The Painted Gun is hardboiled like they don't make anymore. Whiplash twists, razor-sharp prose, an addictive narrative I couldn't read it fast enough."e; Rob Hart, author of The Warehouse