The Cactus Jungle: Three Desert Noir Novels (ePub)

Barry Graham's three hyperviolent, hypersexual novels of Southwestern noir brought together in one volume…

HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR BLUE-EYED BOY?

"Immensely entertaining... a helluva plot, and a wonderful twist."
—Benjamin Whitmer, author of Pike and Cry Father

Andy Saunders knows how to survive. He survived all alone in Los Angeles as a teenager, and he survived in foreign combat zones as a soldier. He survived homelessness on the streets of Phoenix, Arizona, an unforgiving desert metropolis that is the fifth-largest city in the nation.

He's had enough of surviving, and now enjoys life, living with his girlfriend, working as a handyman, teaching martial arts and playing in a punk rock band. But, when a friend falls victim to a contract killing and the police do nothing, Saunders decides to make some inquiries - then finds that he has passed the point of no return, and that the killer is now hunting him. He once again must fight for survival, and the fight will lead him to a truth more awful than anything he has ever known.

The wide open spaces of Arizona turn dark and claustrophobic in this neo-noir tale of seething cruelty and rationalized evil.

THE WRONG THING

"A bloody little gem of contemporary noir…brutal blend of modern-day myth and crime fiction."– Barnes and Noble

They call him The Kid. He's a killer, a dark legend of the Southwest's urban badlands, "a child who terrifies adults." They speak of him in whispers in dive bars near closing time. Some claim to have met him. Others say he doesn't exist, a phantom blamed for every unsolved act of violence, a ghost who haunts every blood-splattered crime scene.

But he is real. He's a young man with a love of cooking and reading, an abiding loneliness and an appetite for violence. He is a cipher, a projection of the dreams and nightmares of people ignored by the economic boom…and a modern-day outlaw in search of an ordinary life. Love brings him the chance at a new life in the form of Vanjii, a beautiful, damaged woman. But try as he might to abandon the past, his past won't abandon him. The Kid fights back in the only way he knows—and sets in motion a tragic sequence of events that lead him to an explosive conclusion shocking in its brutality and tenderness.

WHEN IT ALL COMES DOWN TO DUST

"Not only does Barry Graham have a sharp writing voice, both tight and flowing like James M. Cain…He focuses on the killers and rapists the nightly news gives three minutes of airtime and stares at them until somebody cracks. Usually, it's the reader."
— Scott Montgomery, Mystery People

Laura Ponto wouldn't mind watching Frank del Rio being strapped to the executioner's gurney, even if her job is to find mitigating evidence in death penalty cases. Frank's not a client, but a long time ago he did unspeakable things to children—and Laura was one of them.

Now Frank is being released on parole, and they will both learn that their lives are still intertwined. Their story will end in a place even darker than it began in a shattering noir novel of suspense, sex, violence, love and death in the urban desert of Phoenix, Arizona.