Love Stories Are Too Violent for Me — Will Viharo

Back in print after two decades, this modern, ironic detective story features iconic private eye Vic Valentine, who is hired by a hard-drinking professional baseball player to find a vanished lover. From there, a troubling journey begins, as the hunt leads Valentine down a twisting trail of decadence and danger that eventually takes him to the most unexpected place -- the private eye's own past. This is pulp in the classic sense: the story of a lonesome outsider wrestling with existence and sucked into a whirlpool of lust, passion, and desperation, all served hot, fast, and straight out of the emotionally gory grindhouse called life.