Carve the Heart

Ex-con Jack Palace returns in a world of violence, heartbreak, and revenge.

Cassandra, the woman who broke Jack Palace?s heart, is suddenly back in his life. She owes $600,000 to a brutal gangster who has threatened her life, and she needs Jack?s help. Things start to get violent when Cassandra suddenly disappears ? but not everyone believes she’s in danger. Is Jack being set up?

Bikers, mobsters, and strippers collide as Jack storms the mean streets of Toronto searching for Cassandra. To find her, he must rip open old wounds and confront new enemies. But as loyalties falter and secrets are revealed, Jack begins to wonder who he can really trust. If he doesn?t figure it out fast, he ? and everyone he cares about ? could end up dead.

AUTHOR

A.G. Pasquella

A.G. Pasquella’s writing has appeared in various spots including McSweeney’s, Wholphin, The Believer, Black Book, Broken Pencil and Utne Reader. A.G.’s story “I Was a Teenage Minotaur,” originally published by Joyland, was included in Imaginarium 2013: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. A.G. has published three novellas: Why Not a Spider Monkey Jesus? (which also appeared as a thirty-page excerpt in McSweeney’s #11), NewTown and The This & the That. He is the co-editor (along with Terri Favro) of PAC’N HEAT: A Noir Homage to Ms. Pac-Man. A.G.’s three crime novels in the Jack Palace series – Yard Dog, Carve the Heart and Season of Smoke – were published by Dundurn Press. When he’s not writing, A.G. makes music with the bands Miracle Beard and Lasergnu. A.G. was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, and now lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Reviews

Sharply written, suspenseful and often funny as hell, Carve the Heart smashes its way through the streets of a noirishly entertaining Toronto the Bad like an out-of-control car chase. This is a book up to its shapely ass in double crosses, hot stakes poker games, rescue plans that go sideways, broken noses, strippers, bikers, drug heists, hot sex, plot twists and bottomless tumblers of smoky Scotch sipped in an illegal casino tucked away somewhere in Kensington Market. Can?t wait to see what Jack gets up to in the next installment. In the mean time, I?m going to nose around to see if I can locate that underground casino.
– Terri Favro, author of Sputnik?s Children

Pasquella vividly captures the dog-eat-dog existence of the Toronto underworld.
– Publishers Weekly

Getting impatient with hard-boiled conventions? Try this.
– Booklist

The writing here is very impressive: gritty and profane but also (in the right places) tender and quite moving.
– Booklist, for Yard Dog