Midnight Promise

One PI. Ten crimes. “Stylistically reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill. An exciting and original debut” (The Hoopla Literary Society).

A literary detective story ingeniously told in ten cases. John Dorn is a classic gumshoe. His woman has left him, he lives in his office, and he drinks too much. His one friend, a lawyer named Demetri, hands Dorn an infinite supply of hopeless cases and lost causes, to which Dorn, ever the champion of the underdog and the oppressed, is drawn to “as a sledgehammer is to a kneecap.” A superlative work of hardboiled literary detective fiction, The Midnight Promise wonderfully evokes the underbelly of contemporary Melbourne, its battlers, its hard men, its victims, and its ill-fated heroes.

“[A] powerful hard-boiled debut . . . The cases get progressively more disturbing, both in terms of their subject matter, which include gruesome torture, and their impact on Dorn, a classic world-weary narrator.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Lovitt has a neat way with a yarn. . . . And just when you think he is going to stay close to a kind of downbeat realism, there is a slide into something a little thrillerish and action-packed.” —The Sydney Morning Herald

“[An] artful, Down Under nod to the hard-boiled private eyes of Chandler and Hammett.” —The Christian Science Monitor, “10 Excellent International Thrillers”

“Lovitt is sure-handed in sketching characters, and he laces Dorn’s cases with sardonic humor and prodigious bits of human frailty. . . . Fans of international crime fiction will enjoy Dorn and his milieu.” —Booklist