'Carl Burns has returned to his hometown to support his estranged daughter, Kate, who is one of three witnesses in the rape trial of the town’s mayor. The trial goes bad, and Kate slips slowly into addiction and depression... Even in a hard world, however, there’s always room for fighting back, and nobody does stand-up guys better than Smith.'
- Booklist
ROUGH JUSTICE is Brad Smith's eighth novel, the first to hit the UK market; it was published in hardback in the UK, US and Canada in late 2015/early 2016 and a paperback will be out later this year. Publishers Weekly called it 'engrossing' and Kirkus said a 'slow-burning tale of vigilante justice leading to a satisfying ending'. Translation rights are available.
Brad has previously been published in Canada by Doubleday, Penguin and Simon & Schuster, and in the US by Henry Holt and Scribner, and translated into Hungarian and Japanese. ALL HAT was made into a major feature film and he has also adapted other authors' novels for the big screen. Author Richard Russo called him a writer with 'lots of skill, lots of heart, lots of brains'. He's often been called a modern-day Elmore Leonard.
The next in the Carl Burns series has just been completed.
Brad's books are often set in farming communities near the US-Canada border, where he lives near the shore of Lake Erie (he connects regularly with his readers through events). Brad was born and raised in the hamlet of Canfield in southern Ontario, and as a child had a 'Huck Finn' existence, building rafts and catching frogs and falling off his bike. He grew up on stories - hockey books and listening to the old-timers in the village. Read more here.
Two years ago, in our first deal for Brad (though I've been a fan of his books for years), we placed reprint rights to his first novel, ONE-EYED JACKS, with digital crime publisher 280 Steps:
In addition to placing the new Carl Burns series with Severn House, we've now placed reprint rights to three other fabulously recommendable novels of his, ALL HAT, BUSTED FLUSH and BIG MAN COMING DOWN THE ROAD, with digital publisher Endeavour Press who will launch in a few months. New cover designs to come.
