Snowball in Hell — Roland Hopkins

Snowball in Hell is a bold, breath-taking, and brutal first hard hitting thriller by Roland Hopkins. It is set in postwar Boston circa 1945. Join the film noire, white knuckle ride of raw, rough private eye, Johnny Dark as he discovers the seamy side of the rich and famous, how they treat life, sex and death. Its tautly pace, gusty action will keep you awake as the Johnny follows his shady leads from seedy Scollay Square to earthy Province Town and up to the winter vacation fun of the country's first classy ski resort of Stow, Vermont. A fast-paced, jovial read, this book is a gritty shocker that introduces the possibility of the world's most heinous murderer, Adolf Hitler, succeeding in performing an impossible hoax on the Allies, by escaping to the United states with his wife, and hiding out with US government help. This absorbing, page-turning thriller finds gumshow Dark losing one ally after another until he's faced with committing cold-blooded murder. Li-brary Journal: “… For the most part, first novelist Hopkins uses standard plotting, but he dresses it in 1940s garb, patterned with cigarettes, booze, gambling, sex parties, rapid action, and spicy intrigue. Strongly Recommended.” Booklist: “…Johnny Dark, a Boston private eye, is hired by a beautiful woman to find her husband. But when Johnny discovers that his client's father may have been murdered, and that her brother seems to have disappeared, he realizes this is no simple missing persons case. Hopkins plays a few vari-ations on the theme by setting the action just after the end of World War II and giving a cameo appearance to one of history's most reviled villains. Although the author has a tendency to tell rather than show, he has a good feel for the postwar period, and he effectively captures the noir mood of the era.”