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A Novel
by Tiffany Hanssen
The Sopranos meets Six Feet Under in this thrilling debut crime novel about the killing of a hitman-for-hire, his daughter who wants revenge, and a priest who accidentally witnessed everything.
Gerry Sass is not who he appears to be. On the surface, he is the proud owner of a local country music station outside of Mystic, Iowa. Beneath it, he's a mob-connected hitman-for-hire who launders money through the station WIOA.
One morning in 1986, his life of crime catches up to him when two men march him out into the woods and shoot him in the back of the head. Plunged into purgatory, he's doomed to a painful examination of his life. Unbeknownst to the assassins, Gerry's closest friend, a Catholic priest named Father Dan, witnesses his execution yet does nothing to stop it.
Meanwhile, Gerry's daughter, Early, jumps into his prized Mustang with a thirst for revenge. On her adrenaline-fueled hunt, she comes to realize that she's more like Gerry than she ever chose to admit.
Alternating between the voices of a grieving and adrenaline-fueled daughter, a guilt-ridden priest with no one he can trust, and the voice of a dead killer not quite yet gone, My Name Was Gerry Sass exposes the complicated natures of family, grief, and God in this propulsive and darkly funny novel.
"From its opening pages, public radio host Hanssen's knockout debut, which orbits around the death of a genteel hit man in the 1980s Midwest, hums with suppressed menace. Fast, funny, and emotionally complex, Hanssen's thriller suggests that guilt and family trauma will catch up to even the craftiest evaders. It's an auspicious first outing." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Set in the 1980s, the story has a grittiness, and it is easy to draw comparisons between Gerry and Tony Soprano ... There is a dark humor to the book, as Hanssen weaves complicated family dynamics with a complex relationship with God, and this engrossing crime novel hints at more possibilities ahead." —Booklist
"Concise and to the point, the story unfolds in a swift and satisfying manner, and the protagonists never wear out their welcome... The kind of book that can be read in one sitting, it offers a cinematic plot and fast pace that seem destined for the screen." —Library Journal
"Tiffany Hanssen's debut novel, My Name was Gerry Sass, packs a wallop and pulls no punches. We have a faithless priest, a determined daughter, and a protagonist who is haunted—but not all that bothered—by the decisions he has made in his life. My Name was Gerry Sass is fueled by a rare mixture of momentum, wit, and depth, and charges like a Mustang." —Henry Wise, Edgar Award-winning author of Holy City
"The aftermath of a mob hit evolves into a meditation on life and death in Hanssen's incredible debut. I was fascinated by this interpretation of purgatory that collapses time into a construct and leaves only the connections we forge and the choices that either save or doom us. Hypnotic, gritty, and unflinching, Gerry Sass will stay with you long after he's buried." —Mindy Mejia, USA Today bestselling author of To Catch a Storm and The Whisper Place
This information about My Name Was Gerry Sass 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.
Tiffany Hanssen is an on-air host at public radio station WNYC in New York City. During her decades-long career in broadcasting, she has produced award-winning national programs and worked at stations from Las Vegas to Washington D.C. She is also a screenwriter and mom to two boys. And although she was born in Iowa and spent many years in Minnesota, she currently lives in Manhattan.
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