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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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GREEN SUN

Kent Anderson

Oakland, California, 1982: One good cop against the world.
Before Hanson arrived in Oakland in the winter of 1982, he had already seen some of the worst of humanity on a tour of duty in Vietnam and a stint in the Portland, Oregon police department. And then he moves to California to join the under-funded, understaffed Oakland police force.

Unlike nearly all of his fellow officers, Hanson deliberately chooses to livealonein the precinct that he patrols; he, unlike the rest of the white OPD, takes seriously his duty to serve and protect the black community of East Oakland.

In forty-plus episodic chapters, we follow Hanson as he befriends a young boy, embarks on a romantic relationship, and tries to stay on a notorious drug dealer's good side, all while struggling to stay a good cop despite the violent and hateful forces threatening him from all sides.

Less a police procedural than a look at day-to-day cop life, GREEN SUN really kicks into gear in its third act, when the different strands that Hanson keeps meticulously separate become suddenly, dangerously entangled.

In this riveting novel, Kent Anderson captures the specific, quotidian details of Hanson's world so that a 21st-century reader will find the time, the place, and the man himself, feel both foreign and familiar. This is what readers, including James Patterson, have always loved about his books.

Furthermore, GREEN SUN is bracingly relevant, to both the political and cultural moment we're currently living in: Hanson is a white cop meeting black civilians not as antagonists, but as allies against his becoming the type of cop that he hates most. This is a novel that is tremendously full of heart and sincerity, but without being heartwarmingpossibly because the author himself has lived through much of what he describes.

Kent Anderson is a U.S. Special Forces veteran who served in Vietnam, a former police officer in Portland and Oakland, and a screenwriter. He has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana, and has taught college-level English. He is the author of two previous Hanson novels, SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL first published in 1987 and the New York Times Notable Book NIGHT DOGS in the mid 1990s. He may be the only person in U.S. history to have won two NEA grants for creative writing as well as two Bronze Stars. He lives in New Mexico.
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Book

Published 2018-02-01 by Mulholland Books

Book

Published 2018-02-01 by Mulholland Books

Comments

Green Suntells the unvarnished truth about what it is to be a cop in modern day America. I can give a suspense novel no higher compliment.

Bookpage named it their top mystery for March 2018, and PW deemed it one of the "Top 10 Mysteries for Spring."

Read Anderson for great scenes and an appealingly contrary hero, and the absence of the traditional kinds of genre coherence, not to mention suspense, won't bother you a bit. Read more...

Kent Anderson immediately pulls you into his taut, authentic depiction of a cop's life in early-80s Oakland. Green Sun is crime fiction at its best: smart, unflinching, and, ultimately, compassionate.

Anderson's writing is reminiscent of that of James Lee Burke, blending pathos, violence, and corruption with long-shot hope and glimpses of natural wonder. . . . Anderson's lean but limber style makes this novel a suitable companion for just about anyone.

Kent Anderson has won the Grand Prix de la Littérature Policière major French thriller award for GREEN SUN! Read more...

Kent Anderson serves up the best of what crime fiction can do in Green Sun, showing us a slice of the world that stands for the whole wide world, and giving us Officer Hanson, who?s perseverance and bedrock fairness and understanding of human frailty make him a hero for all places and times. The Hanson Trilogy should not be a secret. It's the best of the best in American storytelling today.

It's got various threads with these cops who are struggling to make their way in this predominantly African American community and when these threads eventually come together, it's pretty exciting.

Kent Anderson is the finest portrayer of the cop novel, elevating the genre to the highest literary form. With his third novel, Green Sun, he completes a trilogy that would sit effortlessly alongside the masters, Cormac McCarthy and James Lee Burke. This is Ellroy for a whole new generation. I am green with admirable envy.

GREEN SUN by Kent Anderson has just won the prestigious French crime/thriller Grand Prix du Roman Noir Etranger 2019 prize of the Beaunes Film Festival! Read more...

"Top Mystery Pick" for March: Brilliant.. Anderson writes effectively not with bombastic special effects, high tension or even a lot of sus-pense, but instead with realism and he imbues his protagonist with a solid dose of humanity. Read more...

UK: Mulholland / Hodder and Stoughton ; French: Calmann-Levy ; Italian: Nutrimenti ; Spanish: Alianza

Kent Anderson has crafted a literary miracle here. We?re transported to 'Nam and circa-'80 Oakland, reimagined as Hell, seen through the eyes of a crusading cop unique in the annals of police literature. This jazzy and jazz influenced novel is like the best of early Joseph Wambaugh. In Oaklandese: If I'm lyin', I'm flyin'!

NPR.org runs an absolutely stunning review, saying "2 Decades In The Making, 'Green Sun' Is Worth The Wait"! Read more...

Anderson doesn't publish much, but when he does, it's something to remember.It is perhaps the perfect time for an honest, realistic, unflinching portrayal of a good cop, and Anderson delivers just that.

Kent will be the guest of honor at the FIRN (Festival International du Roman Noir) crime/thriller festival in Frontignan this June.

After several years teaching English literature in Idaho, Hanson, the hero of Anderson's deeply moving novel set in 1983, has returned to police work as a beat cop in the economically devastated neighborhoods of East Oakland.Anderson's model of community policing couldn't be more timely. Read more...

Kent Anderson is the real deal, with a past to prove it. And Green Sun shows it, with writing that pours across the page like a dark storm, but also shines, and stays with you long after you put it down.

Kent Anderson is one of the unsung legends of crime fiction, largely because he spreads his work so thin. His quietly staggering new novel, which brings back his alter ego Hanson, completes an autobiographical trilogy he began three decades ago with "Sympathy for the Devil." That Vietnam novel.