Thinner tells the story of Billy Halleck, an overweight lawyer who gets distracted while driving home and accidentally runs down an old gypsy woman crossing the street. Halleck avoids what should have a manslaughter conviction because the judge is an old golfing buddy and lets him off the hook. But Halleck can’t escape the scales of justice. The ancient father of Halleck’s victim curses Halleck by laying a scaly finger upon him and uttering the single word, “thinner.”
"One has to write with considerable authenticity to pull off a story steeped in magic and swamp water that examines race and class, death and rebirth, Haitian voodoo, and the beginnings of jazz in 1891 New Orleans. Maistros's gritty debut novel follows the interconnected lives of the Morningstar siblings--all lovingly named by their father after disease-- as they wrestle with a powerful demon, con outsiders, kill and die, die and are reborn. The plot is complex and magical, grounded in the history of the city, without being overly sentimental.
Mersiha has been adopted from war-torn Yugoslavia, and has grown up to be an all-American teenager. When she discovers that her adoptive father is in financial difficulties she decides to intervene, but the consequences of her interference are lethal.
Meltzer builds suspenseful fiction on a previously little-explored historical nugget: Jerry Siegel, the teenage creator of Superman, lost his father in an unsolved murder in 1932. The author offers a compelling theoretical solution by way of an adult protagonist who is dealing with his conflicted feelings about his own father. Cal works for a rescue mission, picking up vagrants in need of shelter, when he stumbles across a man who turns out to be the father who abandoned him in childhood. The two men join forces in pursuit of what they believe is the lost Book of Cain, the weapon used in the Bibles original murder scene.
A plot to steal a top-secret instrument vital to the United States space program poses a challenging case to Frank and Joe Hardy. The whereabouts of their famous detective father is a mystery, so Frank and Joe are on their own to foil the plotters.
