Coming in April from Down & Out Books: ALBATROSS by Ryan Sayles

TAMPA, Fla. - Jan. 24, 2018 - PRLog -- Down & Out Books is pleased to announce that ALBATROSS, a Richard Dean Buckner mystery by Ryan Sayles, will be published on April 16, 2018 in trade paperback and ebook formats.

About ALBATROSS …

Two nuns murdered. Two elderly, wonderful women brutally stabbed to death outside their ghetto mission as they went into the streets to gather the addicts and human waste for a night's rest. Motive? None. If scum are willing to come out of the shadows just to kill, they get paid in little more than blood. In this neighborhood, blood is gold.

Private detective Richard Dean Buckner aids his best friend and former homicide partner Graham Clevenger in working the case. The local priest sees Buckner's handiwork—and rage—firsthand and hires him with the intention of hopefully saving the killer from the worst of the bare knuckle detective's rampage.

Buckner develops a lead and hunts the suspect down, but as Clevenger develops a second, less likely and more earth-shattering suspect of his own, friend is pitted against friend as they race to prove who really did it. All the while Buckner is trying to ignore a similar case from his past where he allowed his pride to railroad the suspect into an early grave. Fearing Clevenger is about to do the same thing, Buckner realizes just how bleak his mistake was.

To hunt a man who slaughtered two nuns, Buckner needs to use a junkyard dog as a landing cushion, make a victim remember the worst night of her life and undo years of therapy, smoke PCP and use a barnyard blow-up doll to strangle a man. So be it. Just another day.

Advance praise for ALBATROSS …

"The only thing more satisfying than watching a series character evolve is witnessing your favorite author make that same transformation. Blessedly, Albatross exhibits both those traits. Richard Dean Buckner, Ryan Sayles's violent, beleaguered, and damn-near-nihilistic private detective, struggles to accept the ideas of grace and the inherent value of humanity in the wake of callous atrocity. And Sayles dares the reader by writing a novel that's not just interested in the characters' lives—their brutal existences—but their immortal souls as well. Somebody is finally doing something interesting with crime fiction." —Grant Jerkins, author of Abnormal Man

"I have come to realize Richard Dean Buckner as a force of nature. A tool Ryan Sayles uses as deftly as only someone as skilled as he can. All told, Albatross is not only a ride I recommend, but one I admire. A fine addition to RDB series." —Beau Johnson, author of A Better Kind of Hate

Meet the author …

Ryan Sayles is the Derringer-nominated author of the Richard Dean Buckner hard-boiled PI series, The Subtle Art of Brutality, Warpath and Albatross as well as the standalone novels Goldfinches and the forthcoming Together They Were Crimson. His short fiction has appeared in dozens of venues in both print and digital media. He has been in numerous anthologies including the Anthony Award-nominated collections Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen and Unloaded: Crime Writers Writing Without Guns.

Celebrating seven years as an independent publisher of award-winning literary and crime fiction, Down & Out Books (https://downandoutbooks.com) is based in Tampa, Florida. For more information about the book, to request a review copy of the book, or to inquire about an interview with the author, contact lance@downandoutbooks.com.