Kill City USA

Out of the same drawer as Philip Marlowe, enter Joe Milo, the cool, laconic Brit private eye, in this thrilling and sexy escapade by the author of The Bell of Girardius and The Whore of Babylon.


It’s South Beach, Florida, summertime, and the living’s uneasy for laconic Brit private eye Joe Milo. The local Yardies have a contract on him, he’s rattled a few urns at a mobster’s crematory and funeral home, and he’s also managed to irritate an Irish Republican group who are running arms to terrorists. They all have one wish in common - for Joe to get out of town pronto. 

And few things interest Milo as much as a sexy woman packing a loaded gun, so enter Cza, a Miami Cuban FBI Special Agent who thinks he should be locked up. Plus there’s a Technicolor supporting cast of villains, lovers, liars, killers, cheats, bloodsuckers and miscreant clowns, with morality and political correctness as a fools distraction, and dialogue you could dance to. 

Soon psychopathic wiseguy Ernie Moresco sends Milo an empty hourglass to be loaded with his ashes, to put the frighteners on him and his enigmatic sidekick Jonah. While Milo enjoys the elegiac quality of the threat, people around him are tending to die in the mayhem of this wittily tangled crime- noir, as Kill City’s about to live up to it’s name... 


Praise from KIRKUS REVIEWS for KILL CITY USA “In his novel debut, Roberts puts his own twist on hardboiled noir and successfully channels the voice of beloved gumshoe greats ... his efforts are well-executed, organic and without compromise ... No matter how great the danger, Milo handles it with aplomb, always perfectly composed and with a witty quip or sarcastic observation at the ready ... the dialogue always pops, and Milo has such a descriptive way with words, it’s well worth the effort ... A contemporary mystery with an old-world feel.”