THE LAST JEW STANDING VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR '07

Join crime thriller author Michael Simon, author of THE LAST JEW STANDING (Viking, Aug. '07), as he virtually tours the blogosphere in November on his first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book Promotion Virtual Book Tours! Born in Levittown, Long Island, the birthplace of mass-produced housing, Michael Simon is a former actor, playwright, and Texas probation officer. He has taught at Brooklyn College and New York University. In 2004, Viking published his first novel, Dirty Sally, which introduced Dan Reles, a half-Jewish, New York Mafia-born Texas homicide detective. Dirty Sally was lauded by The Chicago Tribune as “A bloody and intriguing delight for noir aficionados.” The Seattle Times called it “the finest crime-novel debut since Dennis Lehane’s A Drink Before the War in 1994.” It was named one of the Top Ten Thrillers and Mysteries of the Year by Amazon.com. In 2005, the second book in Simon’s Texas series, Body Scissors, was published, also to critical acclaim. The Rocky Mountain News called it, “Fast paced and suspenseful from start to finish.” Viking signed on for two more Dan Reles thrillers, Little Faith (2006) and The Last Jew Standing (2007). To date, Simon’s works have appeared in Swedish, French, Italian, Japanese, and on audio tape. He lives in New York City. You can visit his website at http://www.michaelsimon.info/. THE LAST JEW STANDING Synopsis: Lieutenant Dan Reles has a new house, a beautiful wife, a son, and a great career as head of Austin Homicide. The past, however, has a way of catching up with you. When Dan’s ex-con father—a Mafia legbreaker who’s spent the last twenty years on the run—shows up on Dan’s doorstep with an escaped prostitute and a stolen car, Dan gets caught on the wrong end of a mob vendetta. Sam Zelig is the last of the Jewish crime bosses, a giant of a man with boundless rage and a passion for pain—other people’s pain. Zelig chases the old man to Austin to retrieve his stolen girl and extract his pound of flesh. But when Dan’s father won’t hand over the girl, Sam Z takes the city itself hostage, forcing Dan to run the gauntlet: a trial by fire and water, a hail of bullets, a bridge embankment and one very angry woodchipper. In the wake of revelations about his New York past and the mother who abandoned him, Dan has to choose between his new family, his father, and the town he’s sworn to protect. Part Damon Runyon, part James Ellroy, Michael Simon paints “an authentic noir landscape and peoples it with equally authentic characters—tarnished cops and haunted hookers,” writing with a rhythm and a soulfulness that raise the bar on crime fiction. Fast paced and suspenseful, The Last Jew Standing thrills to the very last minute. Watch his trailer! THE LAST JEW STANDING EXCERPT: Pax Berelman met with a regrettable incident involving a hotel room in Elmira, New York, a piece of exhaust pipe, and his trachea. Whether it was an accident or suicide, or a simple misassessment of the laws of biology, is a total crapshoot, owing to Pax’s rumored general dizziness and his habits regarding hallucinatory drugs. He was known to be a garbagehead, that is, someone who will get high using anything he can get his hands on—grass, meth, cleaning products— but while his chemical habits may have contributed indirectly to his early death, they had little to do with the exhaust pipe itself. Investigators at the site considered but dismissed theories that he may have been employing said pipe to create a more direct route for intoxicants to travel to his stomach or lungs. Moreover, his drug use proved unrelated to the loss of his vehicle, a jet black Buick LeSabre with racing trim, to the hands of a driver not known to him, barrelling down Highway 15 in a southerly direction toward the Pennsylvania border. The loss of the vehicle in question occurred several days subsequent to Pax’s demise, and was therefore unlikely to create the heartbreak which might cause him to fall or thrust himself upon the rusty 18-inch fragment of exhaust pipe, now lodged longitudinally in his gullet. What makes this a subject of further inquiry is how Pax’s unfortunate accident resulted in a chain of occurrences leading to me, four days later and two thousand miles away, pinned in the front seat of my cool blue Chevy Caprice, which faced north on the six-lane Congress Avenue bridge in Austin, Texas, at four AM as a big black Lincoln rammed into its driver’s side door. The blow thrust my Caprice sideways and tore its tires as my vehicle skidded on its rims, up the curb and onto the walkway, while Mora, who had been standing by the passenger door, ran for cover. As I tried to break loose, the Lincoln backed up in a screeching curve across the six lanes, pulled forward and then backed up hard, again pummelling my driver’s side. It crushed the door inward as far as the steering wheel and rammed my Chevy against the guardrail, barricading the passenger door and me inside. I struggled to roll down the passenger window and jump, when the Lincoln burned rubber and rolled ass-first, hitting the Chevy a third time, now decimating the driver’s side and pushing it up into the air so the two-foot guardrail, instead of protecting me from a fall, served as the fulcrum I’d be tipped over when the Lincoln made the inevitable final strike and knocked me over the rail, trapped between the battered doors, toppling into the cold, dark water below. One could argue this event was only one part of the inevitable cascade of events set off days earlier by Pax Berelman’s untimely death, or even decades earlier with my family’s first involvement in certain circles. But considering the issues at hand, the story really began when it walked in on my otherwise manageable life just two nights before. THE LAST JEW STANDING VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR '07 will officially begin on November 1, 2007. If you would like to follow Michael as he talks about his book and to be eligible to win a free copy, visit all his stops and leave a comment. All winners will be announced on November 30, so watch to see if you're one of the lucky winners! THE LAST JEW STANDING TOUR SCHEDULE: November 1, 2007 Jewish Literary Review www.jewishliteraryreview.com/Article70.aspx November 2, 2007 M.J. Rose http://mjroseblog.typepad.com/backstory/2007/10/michael-simons-.html November 5, 2007 The Story Behind the Books http://www.thestorybehindthebooks.blogspot.com/ November 6, 2007 Blog Talk Radio www.blogtalkradio.com/sydneymolare/ November 7, 2007 Buzz the Book http://www.buzzthebook.blogspot.com/ November 8, 2007 Dark Phantom Review http://www.darkphantomreview.wordpress.com November 9, 2007 Book Marketing Buzz http://www.bookmarketingbuzz.wordpress.com November 12, 2007 The Book Connection http://www.thebookconnectionccm.blogspot.com/ November 13, 2007 Beyond the Books http://www.beyondthebooks.wordpress.com/ November 14, 2007 Paperback Writer http://www.rebecca2007.wordpress.com/ November 16, 2007 You Don't Know Jack! http://youdontknowjack.blogsavy.com/ November 19, 2007 It's a Crime http://www.itsacrime.typepad.com/ November 20, 2007 Leicester Review of Books http://www.leicesterreviewofbooks.wordpress.com/ November 21, 2007 Virtual Wordsmith http://www.virtualwordsmith.blogspot.com/ November 23, 2007 Sydney Molare's Mental Ruminations http://www.sydneymolare.blogspot.com/ November 26, 2007 Storycrafters http://www.storycrafters.blogspot.com/ November 27, 2007 Loaded Questions http://www.loadedquestions.blogspot.com/ November 28, 2007 Blogcritics http://www.blogcritics.org/ November 29, 2007 J. Kaye's Book Blog http://www.j-kaye-book-blog.blogspot.com/ Michael's virtual book tour is brought to you by Pump Up Your Book Promotion Virtual Book Tours at http://www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com/. Tags: Pump Up Your Book Promotion Virtual Book Tours, online book promotion, author publicity, virtual book tour, book promotion, Michael Simon, The Last Jew Standing, crime thriller, detective, mystery