The 2nd of 3 explosive novels. One unforgettable anti-hero. A story about the places, and families, that shape us, whether we want them to or not.

Fans of gritty American noir, small-town corruption, and morally complicated heroes will tear through this trilogy from Jason Beech, author of Never Go Back and Moorlands. Beech's prose has been praised for it's "serious grip" and its refusal to look away from the darkness in ordinary people.

The City of Forts, Book Two

There are towns that forgive you, and there are towns that own you. Ricky Nardilo never learned the difference.

He was thirteen when he put a bullet in Harry Vale's son and walked away … spared, he told himself, by luck. The truth is worse: Vale never let him go. Now the town has a new skyline, new money, and a police force that answers to Vale before it answers to the law, and Ricky wears the badge that's supposed to hold it all together.

He tells himself the men he falls in with are different - out to settle old scores, burning out the rot he's hated his whole life. But violence doesn't clean a town. The corruption just changes hands. And when Vale turns his attention to Ricky's kid brother - patient, deliberate, the way a man builds something he intends to keep - Ricky understands, too late, what kind of trouble he's actually in.

This is a novel about the men a town makes and the ones it discards, about inheritance and blood, about the particular American lie that says a man can outrun where he's from. Beech writes about the town the way the best of this genre writes its cities: as a character with its own hunger, its own memory. A town that never forgets what it's owed.

Book 2 in the City of Forts Trilogy.

Praise for American Spartan

"Tears a path of righteousness through small-town America that reads like it belongs on the big screen."
— Stephen J. Golds, author of Say Goodbye When I'm Gone

"The pace builds relentlessly, delivering real tension and hard-hitting action."
— Goodreads Reviewer

"A novel that rewards close reading, with a delayed emotional impact that lands hard."
— Murder in Common

Step into a town where loyalty is a dangerous choice.
Read American Spartan today—available now.