Max Crime (John Blake Publishing), 2010
“A gritty and compelling story of the damned and the damaged; crackling with dark energy and razor-sharp dialogue. Conrad Williams is an exciting new voice in crime fiction, and Joel Sorrell is a character you will want to see plenty more of.”
Mark Billingham
“Blonde on a Stick is a well written, gritty urban noir thriller that is not for the faint hearted due to a fair amount of violent content. Conrad Williams neatly subverts the cliches of the PI thriller, with his razor sharp writing.”
Laura Root, Euro Crime
“Blonde on a Stick is a fast-moving crime-noir, played on the streets of London and Liverpool rather than LA. It has a wise-cracking detective in Sorrell who gets beaten up a lot, rather like the Jack Nicholson PI in Chinatown. Williams’ novel is bound to attract a large audience from both the dark crime and horror camps, and is sure to be a hit.”
Peter Coleborn, The Piper at the Gates of Fantasy
“This is the real deal: crime writing of a flint-edged, visceral nature that may initially appear to foreground narrative momentum, but is really about character; character, that is, which is delivered on the hoof. London investigator Joel Sorrell has a new client, the enigmatic Kara Geenan, who is in search of her missing brother. Like the Carter of Mike Hodges’s film of the Ted Lewis novel (and Hodges is another star of Maxim Jakubowski’s MaxCrime list), Sorrell is obliged to travel North to discover – painfully – a dark truth. This is writing of real authority, and Williams is a genuine talent. Another winner for the MaxCrime imprint.”
Barry Forshaw, Crime Time
Conrad Williams 