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A KILLING IN CHINA BASIN Now available in the UK and in the US! 
A Killing In China Basin launches a series. There will be at least two books, maybe more with San Francisco homicide inspector, Ben Raveneau, and his partner, Elizabeth la Rosa. In this first, Raveneau and la Rosa have just been paired as working partners and are on-call waiting for their first case. The one they catch won't be easy to solve. The victim is an unidentified Jane Doe and the investigation goes a lot of places, including into the past. Since it's their first together they also have to figure out how to work together. They have to find a rhythm.
The big city detective has been written every which way and some have done it very, very well. What I'm trying to do with Raveneau is first make him whole, so he stands as an interesting character, case or no case, so when the urgency of the investigation bleeds into life there's actually something there. He's in his fifties, nudging toward the end of his career, but without any desire to leave. He's a murder cop. It's what he knows, what he loves, and because I know the city I'm hoping I can write it well enough to make him part of it. Writing this novel and the one following it has also the result of an ongoing four or five year conversation with to San Francisco homicide inspectors, Joe Toomey and Holly Pera. I owe a lot to them. But see what you think. Give it a read. Let me know. All the best, Kirk 
BUY THE BOOK: IndieBound | Amazon UK | Amazon US | Barnes & Noble
A KILLING IN CHINA BASIN Severn House Publishers Ltd., UK, June 2011 Hardcover 224 pages ISBN: 978-0727880543
PRAISE FOR A KILLING IN CHINA BASIN
"After four action-packed procedurals starring California Fish and Game Warden John Marquez (Redback, 2011, etc.), Russell moves to the big city for a more traditional but equally powerful tale of crime and punishment... The intricate plot... is upstaged by the brooding characters, good and evil, the snappy rhythms of Russell's sharply observed prose and the promise of Raveneau's return." —Booklist "Russell [author of] (Redback) introduces an emotionally wounded San Francisco homicide inspector, Ben Raveneau, in the promising first of a new series... The author cleverly resolves the complex plot threads and makes his lead compelling enough to warrant future books." —Publishers Weekly "With more twists and turns than Lombard Street, Russell's complex plot makes for a pulse-pounding police thriller. Since I devoured all of Russell's John Marquez (Redback) titles, I'm thrilled to meet his new protagonist in this series debut. Working the streets of SF, Raveneau brings old-school knowledge to investigations and learns a few new tricks himself." —Library Journal
INTERVIEW Murder by the Bay: PW Talks with Kirk Russell By Lenny Picker Aug 12, 2011 Kirk Russell, author of four novels about California Department of Fish and Game warden John Marquez, introduces San Francisco homicide inspector Ben Raveneau in A Killing in China Basin. Q: You succeeded in breaking new ground with your Marquez books. How do you think the Raveneau series will distinguish itself? A: I don't know that it will. The big city detective has been written a thousand times and sometimes very, very well. I wanted to try to make a homicide inspector who fits the times and who might be real, and if he was, you'd want to know him. And I want to write San Francisco. I lived around it most of my life. There's this first book, and a second next winter, and between the two that's enough, I think, to tell if Raveneau will catch on. I'm still getting a feel for the character. Q: What about San Francisco as a setting appeals to you? A: The city's presence, how it sits nearly surrounded by water at the end of a peninsula, bridges reaching toward it, and the feel that it is a place you go to, not from. There's the light and the way it changes and a natural moodiness and brilliance. As a city, it's international in a way that you can't sell with a motivated Chamber of Commerce. It's a tolerant city, still carrying the gold rush fever, a place people arrive at to start over or start a new company, or in the case of crime fiction become someone else. And a homicide inspector in San Francisco can cover the whole city because it's not particularly large. Q: What was the origin of the Marquez series? A: Marquez was in a subplot in a novel called Tangelo that never made it into print. Right from the start Marquez upstaged the protagonist, and when I gave up hoping Tangelo would sell, it dawned on me I should write Marquez. California has one undercover Fish and Game team, the SOU, Special Operations Unit, and I researched their work firsthand. I did a number of ride-alongs, trailed suspects, saw busts and illegal deals. The three species in California that account for $125 million a year in black market trafficking are abalone, sturgeon, and bear, and my first three Marquez novels dealt with them. Q: Could the two series ever cross over? A: Paths could cross, sure. But I'm kind of leery of that. It's fun to see different characters in a writer's series brush against each other, but it also seems to dilute the drink.  |
     
   
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