K.C. Constantine Books In Order

The Man Who Liked Slow Tomatoes

K. C. Constantine’s Mario Balzic is one of those police chiefs so close to his people that nothing moves or even sits still in his town without his knowing how and why. His town is Rocksburg, a small coal mining town in western Pennsylvania where most of the coal has run out. In this, his fifth case, tomatoes curiously ripening out of season are the key. It begins at Muscotti’s Bar, Balzic’s refuge, when Jimmy Romanelli sells several baskets of tomatoes to Vinnie, Muscotti’s barkeep. It ends some weeks later after three deaths and a drained, disgusted Balzic, unable to take any satisfaction in his solution of Romanelli’s murder, the proximate cause for Jimmy’s twisted passion for growing tomatoes.

As in all Balzic novels, the Chief is the center of consciousness. He’s fiercely unpretentious, in absolute command, without an officious bone in his head or phrase in his mouth. And so fundamentally gentle and good at what he does that not even his Mozartian profanity succeeds in hiding his detective genius. If you’ve not met this Serbo Italian, profoundly American cop, it’s time you did.

Always a Body to Trade

Police Chief Mario Balzic’s sixth case: there’s a new mayor in Rocksburg, PA, one of those simplifying self righteous amateurs bent on law and order who can’t leave anything alone. His calls never stop, even trapping Balzic in his refuge at Muscotti’s Bar.

There’s a double robbery in two identical apartments, rented but hardly ever used by a Pittsburg drug dealer who’s clean with the law. A young woman is found shot dead on the street. She can’t be identified, but her murder has all the appearances of a professional hit. The mayor is near hysteria, and he smears the case all over Balzic, who not only has to solve the murder but teach his nosy new boss the not so plain facts of police work.

It’s an impossible assignment that turns raw and ugly then uglier because it’s a drug case, Balzic’s first; because corrupt state narcs are involved; and because the Rev. Rutherford Rufee, the exotic and superbly drawn boss of the local black underworld, is Balzic’s best hope of solving the crime. And Rufee, a guileful genius, plays Balzic for his own vengeful purposes, purposes that overlap Balzic’s own and climax in the never never land of a bravura plea bargaining deal all of which moves the mayor’s education well up into graduate study. Balzic and the law don’t lose, but the victory is hardly sweet.

There is not literary tyranny quite like a category. Constantine is a novelist who writes, we say, ‘detective fiction,’ but that misses what’s most memorable about his books the superb rendition of social texture and of particular people embedded in it, something only our best novelist can do. Always a Body to Trade belongs to readers who shun catagories. It’s familiar small town Rocksburg, tough, immigrant working class and shot through with the verbal magic Constantine weaves out of everyday speech, heightened this time by miracles of Black English.

Joey’s Case

Police Chief Mario Balzic has got one hot Italian on his heels. Albert Castelucci wants to straighten some things out about his son’s murder. It seems that the investigator Balzic appointed to Castelucci’s case made such a mess no jury could convict the killer. Pushing Balzic into losing his temper may just provide the answers Castelucci needs.

Bottom Liner Blues

When Police Chief Mario Balzic receives a telephone call from a woman who warns that her brutal husband is planning to attack a truck driver, Balzic’s investigations unearth a puzzling case. By the author of Joey’s Case.

Cranks and Shadows

After being told to lay off five members of his undermanned police department, Mario Balzic, police chief of a struggling blue collar Pennsylvania town, confronts dangerous members of the Conemaugh Foundation, a secret organization out to seize control of the town.

Good Sons

In the months since Police Chief Mario Balzic has retired, Detective Ruggiero Carlucci finds himself in line as the likely successor, that is if he can solve the case of a local businesswoman who has been brutally raped and battered.

Family Values

Plunged into the legal morass of a 17 year old murder case, Balzic faces a variety of cons, each offering different variations of a drug deal gone wrong, and two corpses left in a mountain log cabin. Balzic’s interviews lead him to a small town police chief who carried out his own personal reign of terror over the decades looting, raping, and murdering the denizens of his borough. In discovering the history of this monster, Balzic must now enter his very own heart of darkness.

Brush Back

The highly acclaimed author of ‘Good Sons’ and ‘Family Values’ brings back the popular Detective Ruggiero ‘Rugs’ Carlucci, acting chief of the Rocksburg, Pennsylvania, Police Department. When a former professional baseball player is beaten to death, Carlucci delves into the recent past of the athlete and finds that the bases are loaded with suspects National print ads, publicity .

Blood Mud

The New York Times Book Review has hailed K. C. Constantine as the ‘eloquent’ medium for ‘the voices of people who have lost out on the American dream’. The place once again is the fictional town of Rocksburg, PA, which once had factories and saloons. Today it has ‘professional buildings’ and saloons. It is here you’ll meet Mario Balzic, the retired but irrepressible police chief who, like Rocksburg itself, is far from ready to call it quits…
He’s lost his mother. He’s earned his pension. Now Mario Balzic swaps the service rags of the public cop for the shirt and tie of the private cop. His assignment to go with the new look? Track down some stolen guns for an insurance company. Mario isn’t surprised when they lead to bigger trouble: a philandering politico, an ambitious police chief, and his hapless nephew. Then a sudden murder puts a twist into his search, and a sudden cardiac episode almost stops him cold. Mario’s lonely job has become a grim mission: to stay alive, at least long enough to crack another case.

Grievance

James Deford Lyon, philanthropist and CEO of one of Pittsburgh’s greatest steel companies, has been gunned down in his palatial home by a sniper, and detective ‘Rugs’ Carlucci is the man lucky enough to receive the call. Quickly besieged by the demands of media figures from Washington and New York and sifting through hundreds of able bodied suspects who’ve been downsized by Lyons, Rugs has more than enough to worry about. But life goes on: His mother has a violent outburst that leads her to a mental hospital; Rugs’ partner is operating behind his back, hoping to nail the killer and gain a promotion; and his relationship with a one time Miss Pennsylvania runner up is coming to a critical crossroad. Meanwhile, a vicious killer is making sure no one feels safe…
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Saving Room for Dessert

For former Air Force veteran and ex mall security guard William Rayford, making the cut as Rocksburg’s first African American cop fulfilled one of his life’s ambitions, even though it sometimes still gives him a case of the Steel City Blues. Rayford well knows this town’s dark history of prejudice, but dealing with it is something else. Now, with his fellow officers, Rayford is ready for whatever Rocksburg throws his way, even if it means patrolling the river flats, where things can get deadly pretty quickly.