In Rob Hart's followup to NEW YORKED, Ash McKenna leaves the Big Apple to escape his troubles. He longs to become more than the blunt instrument that he believes himself to be. He finds work at a vegan strip club with a double entendre for a name: "Naturals." One of the strippers asks him to find her daughter who was kidnapped by kid's junkie father. Hart raises the stakes again and again, making Ash's good deed seem like an impossible task. Ash is left with no option but to embrace his anger in...

Ash is the bomb!Rob Hart has joined that elite group of authors who manage to create an original and one of a kind character that is so addictive to those of us who love modern day noir.Ash is back in this second book in the series in a new town and right in the middle of a new chaotic situation, trying to do the "right" thing and taking it all very personally as he does! Great follow-up to New Yorked and maybe even better! Ready for the next chapter in this flawed but oh so likeable amateur det...

Fans of Rob Hart’s NEW YORKED won’t be disappointed by the return of Ashley “Ash” McKenna, the good hearted but admittedly damaged, sometimes dangerous, clever but not always smart private investigator (sort of) who always controls his anger, except when it controls him. CITY OF ROSE is set in Portland, Oregon, where Ash has relocated after leaving New York in search of new beginnings, and away from those who may feel New York City isn’t big enough for their peaceful coexistence. In Portland, A

I really enjoyed NEW YORKED and had high expectations for this book. It surpassed them.CITY OF ROSE has everything that made NEW YORKED a fantastic read, but Hart stepped up his game in a big way. The plot is more focused and writing more refined, but still retains that off-kilter worldview that made NEW YORKED so enjoyable. What really affected me was the emotional aspects of the novel. Previously, Ash had been a barely controlled ball of rage, fueled by Jameson and grief. But in ROSE, Ash has

Well, on the one hand there is nothing unique about this series. Ash McKenna is like so many other PIs (though he is not actually one; he just does what they do): brooding, commitment-challenged, sometimes psychopathic. But boy can Hart write, and while, like some other readers, Ash is not a character I especially warm up to, this, like "New Yorked" is one heck of a good story.The setting is memorable. There are not a lot of dark stories written about Portland, Oregon. The center of this one is

2nd book in an easy to read and enjoyable series. A little bit of a hero comes to town and saves the day cliche, though still good.

I liked Rob Hart's NEW YORKED a lot. I like this one even better. Ashley "Ash" McKenna, Hart's troubled knight-errant in a cheap straw cowboy hat, is a great character. In this installment, he's out of his native New York and definitely out of his element as he tries to leave behind his violent past and make a new life in Portland, Oregon. Ash's job in a vegan strip club (yes, you read that right) puts him in contact with a beautiful and troubled young woman who asks him to help her find her mis...

From ashes to ashes..I’m enjoying the character Ash McKenna. He’s a bit more complicated than the first book “ New Yorked”. This tale had enough to keep me reading. He made the dark side of a strip club seem human.

When readers last saw Staten Island born and bred bouncer/amateur private investigator Ash McKenna (New Yorked), he’d been through the ringer trying to get to the bottom of the murder of his longtime friend and unrequited love, Chell. Along the way things got rough and people, including Ash, got roughed up.Having burned a few bridges and ruffled more than a few feathers, Ash decides it’s time to take a leave of absence from his beloved New York City. He ends up in Portland, Oregon, working as a

A lot of authors struggle when they get out of their setting comfort zone. Hart's NEW YORKED was such a perfect picture of the Big Apple, that when I saw CITY OF ROSE was set in Portland, I wondered how Hart would handle changing locales. The answer? Perfectly.Hart brings back his sorta PI Ash McKenna, a blunt instrument struggling to be himself. Working in a vegan strip joint as a bouncer, McKenna is "hired" by one of the strippers to find her daughter. What follows is a tense, brutal trip thro...

Good book. Better than his first in the series, I thought, and the first was pretty decent. One note: Janis Joplin did NOT record Son of A Preacher Man. Never. Ever. Maybe Mr. Hart was thinking of Dusty Springfield.

Short summary: We meet back up with Ash McKenna outside Naturals, a Portland-based vegan strip club as he's doing half of what he's good at--getting hit. He's working on keeping the other half, hitting back, tucked deep down inside and far away from the surface. Portland is just the latest stop in a tour of US cities Ash has been through lately, all of them following his departure from New York in the wake of a self-destructive quest to find a friend's killer. He's doing his best to turn over a

Ash McKenna is one of the most engaging, flawed heroes to come into creation in who knows how long. In City of Rose, Rob Hart paints him with an artist’s eye and shows us his toughness and his vulnerability, and his quest to reconcile the two in a manner that proves Hart has his eye on becoming a master noir writer.McKenna, who we initially met in Hart’s first novel, New Yorked, is tasked with attempting to help a stripper locate her lost daughter, Rose. Rose’s father has disappeared with her an...

I'll say this: the first fifty page of this novel or so exploded in my face like a stick of TNT. Jesus, Rob Hart can write. Better than you most likely. Better than me too. His action scenes are lean and mean and seamlessly flowing into one another. The book slows down considerably afterwards and becomes more problematic to me, but I'd take an entire novel of Rob Hart doing the angry Comanche on the keyboard.I've never had a relationship to a fictional character like I do with Hart's Ash McKenna...

A missing child, an amateur investigator, and a mom working in a questionable occupation, all being pursued by a sociopathic chicken man. Despite how that might sound like comedy, the storyline is serious, compelling, and the action is intense in this second in a series featuring Ash McKenna. Ash thinks of himself as not a good guy, but his motivations and actions prove otherwise. I loved this story.

Oh Ash, destined to wander the country alone, falling in love but never staying in one place. I didn't see the twist coming, which I appreciated, and I liked Crystal a lot - was glad she told Ash how creepy he was acting towards Chell. This was a good second novel - they aren't always.

Mysterious Book Report No. 251by John Dwaine McKennaIs there anyplace on earth after you’ve grown up living in New York City . . . or anyplace you’d rather be . . . after growing up and living in New York City? It’s a conundrum for Ash McKenna, the self-described human wrecking ball and unskilled, but productive private investigator who’s damned good at finding people, then messing it up after that because of his “bent moral compass,” which allows him to stomp the bad guys into piles of blood an...

Really enjoying this series. Looking forward to starting the next one!

Who was your first book-crush when you were a kid? Mine was Calvin O'Keefe from A Wrinkle In Time. I loved him so hard! He was a ginger! And sweet! He took care of Charles Wallace, and loved nerdy Meg. He was (and still is) a perfect guy.Since reading A Wrinkle In Time for the first time, I've had many (MANY) other book crushes. Jem in To Kill A Mockingbird. Richie Tozier in It. So many more, I can't even think of them.Now I have a new one. I trust that the author's wife is going to forgive me f...

I ordered this at the library before finding out it was a sequel. I figured I may as well read it even if the first one was annoying so that maybe the author could redeem himself. He did an okay job, and the writing was still interesting.If you are reading this before New Yorked, you'll do fine. There's not too much of the first book that bleeds into this one, and you may save yourself annoying redundancy because any relevant details are explained exactly the same way. I don't have the first boo...