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Published Feb 2018
352 pages
Genre: Mysteries
Publication Information
The long-awaited return of Kent Anderson, with "the best of what crime fiction can do" (Michael Connelly).
Oakland, California, 1983: a Vietnam veteran-turned-police officer strives to be both a good cop and a good man.
Oakland in 1983 is a city churning with violent crime and racial conflict. Officer Hanson, a Vietnam veteran, has abandoned academia for the life-and-death clarity of police work, a way to live with the demons he brought home from the war.
But Hanson knows that justice requires more than simply enforcing the penal code. He believes in becoming a part of the community he serves - which is why, unlike most officers, he chooses to live in the same town where he works. His sense of fairness and honor leads to a precarious friendship with Felix Maxwell, the drug king of East Oakland. He is befriended by Weegee, a streetwise eleven-year-old who is primed to become a dope dealer. He falls in love with Libya the moment he sees her, a confident and outspoken black woman.
Every day, every shift, tests a cop's boundaries between the man he wants to be and the officer of the law he's required to be. When an off-duty shooting prompts an internal investigation, Hanson must finally face who he is, and which side of the law he really belongs on.
"Starred Review. Deeply moving... Anderson's model of community policing couldn't be more timely." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. 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." - Booklist
"Readers will neither like nor dislike Hanson; he is tepid, neither rogue cop nor rule follower. Even the violence is subdued ... Strictly only for the author's fans." - Library Journal
"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." - Kirkus
"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." - Ken Bruen
"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'!" - James Ellroy
"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." - Alafair Burke
"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." - David Swinson
This information about Green Sun was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Kent Anderson is a U.S. Special Forces veteran who served in Vietnam and a former police officer in Portland, Oregon, and Oakland, California. With an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana, he has taught college-level English and written screenplays. His two previous novels, Sympathy for the Devil and the New York Times Notable Book Night Dogs, both feature Hanson. Anderson 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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