Description
Fiction. Here’s a book which starts innocently enough with a photographer buying an old camera and discovering some black and white negatives hidden in the box that the camera came in when it was originally sold. Wanting to find out about the photos leads him to people and places he didn’t expect, and to long-unsolved crimes by prominent people. Suddenly those negatives become extremely dangerous to possess.
Russell Hill is a three-time nominee for the Edgar Allen Poe prize. His books, Lucy Boomer and The Lord God Bird have been optioned for film, and his work has been translated into French, German and Polish. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area, is married, and has three grown children. He is an avid fly fisher and his book, The Search for Sheepheaven Trout has become a “cult classic” among fly fishers.
You can visit his writing at russellhillwriter.wordpress.
Other books by Russell Hill:
Letters from the Mines (poetry)
The Search for Sheepheaven Trout (essays)
The Heeler (short stories)
Novels:
The Edge of the Earth (originally titled Cold Creek Cash Store)
Lucy Boomer
The Lord God Bird
The Dog Sox
Tom Hall and the Captain of All These Men of Death
The Egret
A reader on Amazon –
Clocking in at about a three hour reading time, Deadly Negatives by Russell Hill reads like a classic hard-boiled pulp of the 50s, stripped down to only the essentials and filled with broadly drawn characters and machine-gun like dialogue. The plot moves like a speeding Chevy down a dark road as violent event follows violent event and the reader is never sure there isn’t one last twist in this thrilling throwback.
Michael McSwain is a classic photographer, using old 35 MM cameras for his portrait business. Buying an old Leica camera at a second hand store, Michael finds some negatives that bring him a lot of unwanted attention. After talking with the widowed wife of the man who had once owned the camera (who tells him to destroy the negatives), Michael’s house is torn apart, and soon sinister men with violence on their mind are following him around town… This non-stop action thriller…[is] entertaining as hell!
Ted Feit –
There is non-stop action along with the danger in which Michael finds himself as he attempts to find out who so desperately wants the negatives. The novel is relatively short and can be read in a single sitting, as was the case for this reviewer. In the end, it is well worth the small amount of time it takes for an ending that really comes out of the blue.