Shortlisted for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Award 2016.
Another mighty impressive debut by a British author despite its sprawling American background and themes. Baker has the audacity to revisit the web of conspiracies surrounding the JFK assassination and despite the sterling previous contributions to the fictional subject by James Ellroy, Don De Lillo and even Stephen King, comes up trumps. This is noir at its darkest, with a palette of doomed characters, femmes fatales who are deadlier than the male, losers and no winners, sprinkled with unsettling appearances by real-life characters like Howard Hughes, Marilyn Monroe, J. Edgar Hoover and a whole cast list of names dragged into the cesspool of that fatal day in Houston. Add a merciless killer with a conscience, a writer obsessed by the killing but unaware of his true identity and connection to it and a fallen FBI agent now seeking redemption as private eye, and you have a cauldron of intrigue like no other. Considering the subject matter, I was not expecting to even like the book, but was blown away. ~ Maxim Jakubowski
Nick Alston, a Los Angeles private investigator, is hired to find the kidnapped son of America's richest and most hated man. Hastings, a mob hitman in search of redemption, is also on the trail. But both men soon become ensnared by a sinister cabal that spreads from the White House all the way to Dealey Plaza. Decades later in Dallas, Alston's son stumbles across evidence from JFK conspiracy buffs that just might link his father to the shot heard round the world. Violent, vivid, visceral: Fever City is a high-octane, nightmare journey through a Mad Men-era America of dark powers, corruption and conspiracy.
Born into a showbiz family in Sydney, Tim Baker lived in Rome and Madrid before moving to Paris, where he wrote about jazz. He later ran consular operations in France and North Africa for the Australian embassy, liaising with international authorities on cases involving murder, kidnap, terrorism and disappearances. He has worked on film projects in India, Mexico, Brazil, Australia and China and currently lives in the South of France with his wife, their son, and two rescue animals, a dog and a cat.