House of Blazes
A Novel
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Levi Hayes is out for gold — and blood — in this high-magnitude historical tear through the mean streets of San Francisco
In the days before the great earthquake and fire of 1906, Levi Hayes returns from San Quentin Prison with a plan. After serving five years for the theft of $30,000 in gold coins from the San Francisco Mint, he’s ready to take back what’s his and exact revenge on the now-powerful Healey brothers who set him up and had his barroom, House of Blazes, seized by court order.
To get back his bar Levi recruits his nephew, Mack Lewis, telling him the gold coins wait hidden behind one of its cellar walls. Their wild scheme propels them through saloon halls, gambling dens, back alleys, and brothels before it backfires. In lock-up as the earthquake hits, Levi and Mack must escape the collapsing building and burning city to get to the gold coins, with Quinn Healey determined to get his own revenge on them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kalteis sets his fourth crime novel (after Triggerfish) in 1906 in San Francisco's Barbary Coast district, "a back alley of vice and corruption," viewed by many as "a moral cancer on this Paris of the Pacific." The story pits Levi Hayes, who has returned from doing five years in San Quentin Prison for stealing $30,000 in gold from the San Francisco mint, against the powerful Healey brothers, who he believes saw to it that he was found guilty. Levi wants to return to the House of Blazes, his barroom seized by the Healeys, to recover the gold coins hidden in the cellar walls and to seek revenge on the brothers. Laden with local color gambling dens, houses of prostitution, lawlessness much of the action takes place against the backdrop of the great earthquake and fire of 1906, and Kalteis vividly depicts the terror and random death both caused. Populated by a diverse cast of well-drawn characters, including Levi, his nephew Mack Lewis, the newly widowed Mabel Porter, black widow Florence Healey, madam Pearly Wilkes, crooked copper Quinn Healey, pimp Byron Blake, and Red Tom, this book is for readers who like their history gritty and action-packed.
