The Essex Man: 10 Seconds to Death by Gary Phillips

Part Shaft and part Batman sans the costume, Luke Warfield is an expert in various fighting arts and scientific disciplines.  He gives back to the community in the form of his venture capitalist outfit, Essex Ltd.   But like a digital age Jay Gatsby, rumors abound as to how he made his wealth — from doing wet work as a black ops merc in the Far East and Africa, to ripping off a secret cache of Wall Street insiders ill gotten gains.  What is known is that if there’s trouble, Luke Warfield will engulf himself in the heat of action.

In 10 Seconds to Death, his first outing in a planned series, the Essex Man goes on the trail of the villain who killed his foster father and uncovers not only ghosts from his past, but must stop a deadly plan of mass slaughter in his own backyard.

THE ESSEX MAN is available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

*****

The Essex Man: 10 Seconds to Death reviews

“…in the hands of a lesser writer, it might easily have simply ended up being adolescent wankery. But Phillips is too smart, and too good a writer, for that. He brings plenty of political, social and cultural heft and hard-boiled swagger to the party; that same rare combo of pulp grit and street smarts that he’s brought to his acclaimed Ivan Monk detective series and other works. Dig it.”
— Kevin Smith, Thrilling Detective

“Of course my first thought, and probably yours too, when the Men’s Adventure genre is introduced is – bad writing. But I posit that Phillips could be the man to redeem the form – delivering punchy, brief, topical badassery to your eReader.”
— Jedediah Ayres, Hardboiled Wonderland

*****

Gary Phillips has a short story in the recently released The Heroin Chronicles, and he contributed an essay to the Edgar-nominated Robert Parker tribute book, In Pursuit of Spenser.  KCET’s Departures picked his crime novel Warlord of Willow Ridge as one of its best books of 2012.  His website is: www.gdphillips.com.