Beast of Burden (Cal Innes Novels) - Hardcover

In his short career as Manchester’s most indestructible private eye, Callum Innes has been run over by a car, beaten within an inch of his life, shot in the ear, left for dead on a desert roadside, and halfway blown up by a car bomb. 

Now, mourning the death of his addict brother, walking with a cane, and barely able to speak following a massive drug-related stroke, Cal is a wreck. Enter Manchester ganglord Morris Tiernan to make his life even worse. Tiernan’s ne’er-do-well son Mo has gone missing, and Cal Innes is the only person the distraught gangster trusts enough to conduct the search. There’s nobody Cal would like to find less, but you don’t say no to Uncle Morris. And it turns out that Innes is not the only one working the case — the corrupt and parasitic Detective Sergeant “Donkey” Donkin has a vested interest in the fate of the Tiernans, as well as a long-standing grudge against the intrepid private eye. 

In this fourth and final installment of the Cal Innes series, our hero gives up acting as a pawn in Manchester’s underworld disputes. He has his own burdens to bear and scores to settle — with the Tiernan family, with Sergeant Donkin, and with the darkness in his own past.

Praise for the Cal Innes Series

BEAST OF BURDEN
“[Banks] writes with harshness, humor, and elegance, and his punchy dialogue teems with vigorous authenticity — though I had better warn you that his expletive count is unmatched by any crime writer I’ve read. This should not put you off. Banks is the real thing.” — The Times (UK)

NO MORE HEROES
“Tough, funny, and startlingly original, No More Heroes takes the modern P.I. novel to a whole new level. If you like Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin, and Ken Bruen, you have to read Ray Banks.” — Jason Starr, author of The Pack

SUCKER PUNCH
“Sucker Punch stomps, a ferocious asskicker of a novel. Ray Banks writes with swagger, venomous drollery, and a good hard eye for details that matter. The characters he creates hang in the mind, spilling beer, fumbling for smokes, wandering into crimes that simply happen without much advance planning — that is, Sucker Punch presents a stunningly warped reflection of life as we know it in some neighborhoods.” — Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter’s Bone

SATURDAY ’S CHILD
“Banks wields language with a knife-fighter’s precision, with much the same result. From the first words to the last, this book flashes brilliantly.” — Don Winslow, author of Savages