Books
The Vaults
In a dystopian 1930s America, a chilling series of events leads three men down a path to uncover their city’s darkest secret. At the height of the most corrupt administration in the City’s history, a mysterious duplicate file is discovered deep within the Vaults — a cavernous hall containing all of the municipal criminal justice records of the last seventy years. From here, the story follows: Arthur Puskis, the Vault’s sole, hermit-like archivist with an almost mystical faith in a system to which he has devoted his life; Frank Frings, a high-profile investigative journalist with a self-medicating reefer habit; and Ethan Poole, a socialist private eye with a penchant for blackmail. All three men will undertake their own investigations into the dark past and uncertain future of the City — calling into question whether their most basic beliefs can be maintained in a climate of overwhelming corruption and conspiracy.
Publisher’s Weekly Starred Review: “…the plot steamrolls to a dramatic conclusion. Ball’s “City,” in which despair and graft are almost palpable, is an imaginative achievement on a par with Loren Estleman’s Gas City.”
Scorch City
Journalist Frank Frings rouses Lieutenant Piet Westermann in the middle of the night with an unusual request: move the body of a dead blonde from where she was found on the bank of a river near the utopian Uhuru Community, a Negro shantytown under threat from a deadly coalition of racists and anti-communists — and find out how the body actually got there. As the investigation deepens, complicated by a string of possibly related deaths and disappearances, and ever-more-heated racial, religious and political factors come to bear, Westermann’s rationalist worldview is challenged by the ecstatic religious experiences he encounters in the Community, led by the charismatic Father Wome. All the while, Frank Frings works to stay ahead of a more venal journalist competitor to salvage the Uhuru Community’s reputation before its enemies can achieve its final destruction.
Publisher’s Weekly: “…Ball’s worthy follow-up… deftly blends the corrupt politics of the City with Westermann’s efforts tosolve the murder and preserve his own secrets.”
Invisible Streets
It’s the mid-1960s, and the City is a hulking shell of itself. Bohemians, crooks, and snarling anti-Communists have their run of the place, but if Nathan Canada has his way, all this decline and decadence will soon be nothing but a distant memory. His New City Project will paper over the grit and the grime, making the City safe for the rich. According to Canada and his influential allies, the project is the City’s last best hope―but according to everyone else in town, it’s a death knell. So when the Project’s cache of explosives goes missing, everyone is a suspect, and police detective Torsten Grip finds himself up against a ticking clock and a wall of silence. Meanwhile journalist Frank Frings―the last honest man in the City―sets out to find his friend’s grandson, who has gotten himself involved with Kollectiv 61, a radical group that Grip believes holds the key to the investigation. And in the middle of it all is Canada’s enforcer Phil Dorman, whose job is to ensure that the City’s corruption and chaos remain at a boil―but never more than that. At once a cinematic journey through a city down on its luck and a gripping story all the way up to its shocking conclusion, Toby Ball’s Invisible Streets will leave you awed and breathless.