TRY DARKNESS: REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

GIVEAWAY ENDED
TRY DARKNESS
BY JAMES SCOTT BELL

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Ty Buchanan is living on the peaceful grounds of St. Monica's, far away from the glamorous life he led as a rising trial lawyer for a big L.A. firm. Recovering from the death of his fiancée and a false accusation of murder, Buchanan has found his previous ambitions unrewarding. Now he prefers offering legal services to the poor and the under-represented, from his "office" at local coffee bar The Freudian Sip. A mysterious woman with a six year old daughter comes to him for help. She's being illegally evicted from a downtown transient hotel, an interest represented by his old law firm and former best friend, Al Bradshaw. Buchanan won't back down. He's going to fight for the woman's rights.

But then she ends up dead, and the case moves from the courtroom to the streets. Determined to find the killer and protect the little girl, who has no last name and no other family, Buchanan finds he must depend on skills he never needed in the employ of a civil law firm.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

James Scott Bell's fiction has been compared by Booklist and the Los Angeles Times to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, two of his favorite authors. A former trial lawyer, Jim was also fiction columnist for Writers Digest Magazine and adjunct professor of writing at Pepperdine University. His book on writing, Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure, is one of the most popular writing books available today.

After graduating from Taft High School in Los Angeles, Bell went on to play basketball at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he pursued a degree in Film. But his love of writing shot to the forefront of his interests. While still in college, Bell's writing got him a spot to study with Raymond Carver, one of America's most honored writers. Bell also won an award for a screenplay he wrote in his senior year.

After graduation, Bell moved to New York to write for the theater. Almost immediately he was cast in a small role in an Off Broadway production of Othello, "and I began my actor phase." That phase included stints in several Off Broadway productions and in television commercials. "Commercials were nice," Bell remembers. "I'd hold up a tray of hamburgers for McDonald's and keep getting these residual checks. What a business."

While in New York Bell met his wife to be, an actress, and decided one thespian in the family was enough. He went to the University of Southern California Law School, graduated with honors and won the American Board of Trial Advocates' Award as the top student in Trial Practice. He was a litigator for a year with a large L.A. firm before opening up his own office.

He now writes full time. His favorite writers, in addition to Chandler and Hammett, include John D. MacDonald and Michael Connelly.

REVIEW:

In TRY DARKNESS, James Scott Bell gives readers a breathtakingly suspenseful crime novel. His writing style is clever and engaging and keeps the reader turning pages to see what will happen next. The book was really fun to read (I often like to not have to work quite so hard all the time when I read). As a fan of books with short chapters, like the kind James Patterson writes, I really enjoyed reading my first James Scott Bell book. Bell writes short chapters so you can read “just one more”, however, just so you know, he has some REALLY short chapters so be prepared for that.

Ty Buchanan is back in this latest James Scott Bell thriller, TRY DARKNESS. Ty is a rare, casual and unconventional man who we wouldn’t normally associate with being a lawyer, but indeed he is. However, after being charged for a crime he didn't commit, the big powerful law firm he worked for fired him. Of course, once he proved his innocence, the firm wanted him back but Ty made a major life change. He gave up his fancy home and moved to live in a trailer just outside a monastery. There he found an unlikely partner in Sister Mary Veritas, who also likes a good game of basketball. Through the monastery, Ty gets many of his clients as he now is working with the poor and doing mostly pro bono work.

Ty's latest case involves a young girl, Kylie, whose mother was viciously murdered right in front of her. The woman, Reatta, had previously come to Ty for help as she was going to be evicted. Ty’s powerhouse old law firm and best friend were representing the beat up old hotel that was trying to illegally kick her out. Ty and Sister Mary Veritas look into the case, and they discover a conspiracy between, you guessed it, Ty's old law firm, and a formidable business tycoon With many new, well-developed characters, Ty has to try and solve this case for little Kylie who has stolen his heart and is left with no last name, all alone in the world. In place of much courthouse action, Ty takes the case on and finds a whole different world of legal matters to deal with then ever before. His connection with Sister Mary Veritas becomes more interesting as the story concludes in a cleverly satisfying finale, and with Kylie’s help, the reader can see how many of these characters will no doubt be following Ty into Bell’s next adventure in this series.

CLICK ON THE COVER
TO READ CHAPTER ONE!
(At the website, click on NOVELS,
then click on title TRY DARKNESS)
GIVEAWAY

THANKS TO VALERIE AND THE
HACHETTE BOOK GROUP, I HAVE
FIVE COPIES OF THIS EXCITING
MYSTERY TO GIVEAWAY!


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