Jim Nisbet

A young governess accompanies her two charges to a frontier planet and finds the children are involved with an evil power.

Summary:The streets of San Francisco ooze with danger, sex, poets, and technology in this hard-boiled mystery, creating a story that is at turns hilarious, thrilling, and obscene. Set in the 1980s, this is the tale of an idealistic and angst-ridden writer who struggles with day-to-day responsibilities such as paying his rent on time. Exploring ways to exploit technology, the writer flirts with hacking, while dealing with a world of bars, bordellos, and the AIDS virus. When the writer learns the passwords to the inner workings of the publishing industry's digital realm, he finds himself facing dangers

Summary:"San Francisco frame maker Danny Kestrel regularly rubs elbows with the rich and immoral at art openings and commissions. But he's never dreamt of entering their lurid world until Renée Knowles--interior decorator, billionaire's wife, nymphomaniac--asks for a ride. When Knowles is murdered soon after their one-night stand, Danny finds himself a prime suspect. Renée's death has stirred up a hornet's nest of fabulously crooked and wealthy collectors of black market historical artifacts, all seeking the crown jewel: the eponymous Syracuse Codex, a secret account of Empress Theodora's illegitimate son. Worse, everyone seems to think Danny has it"--Page 4 of cover

In the parallel near-future, a ship named for a jellyfish sinks into the Caribbean with its captain chained to the mast. Left behind is a logbook missing ten pages, presidential DNA hidden in a brick of smuggled cocaine, and a nearly-completed novel. Tipsy, the dead sailor's sister, and Red Means, his erstwhile employer, travel from San Francisco to the Caribbean and back as they attempt to unravel a mystery that rapidly widens from death at sea to international conspiracy.

In the new novel from noir master Jim Nisbet, the Snitch World in question is actually made up of different worlds both old and new, populated with the old-time petty criminals, like Chainbang and Klinger, but also with the modern, including a nouveau femme fatale whose tools of the criminal trade are from the new economy. Snitch World takes place in a San Francisco of menacing technology, where the old cons come up short and the crimes of the night turn into crimes done in the light of modern dayall from the glow of a smartphone. Klinger hangs out at the Hawse Hole Bar and Grille, a pretty bad dive where all he really wants is enough to have a cup of coffee, buy some cigarettes, make it through the day, and find a warm, dry place to sleep; all things that can be accomplished by the next easy grift. Little does Klinger know that the rules of the game have changed, and the stakes are higher than he could ever guess or care about. The seemingly simple act of rolling a drunk begins a series of events that get stranger and more complicated by the moment. Jim Nisbet, with his characteristic humor and brilliant prose, creates a world where to trust is to possibly sacrifice all. Snitch World includes a recent interview with Jim Nisbet, in conversation with Patrick Marks, owner of the Green Arcade, talking about writing, publishing, and technology.