Crang Mystery Books
'Cause a poker face aint' just a song by Lady Gaga' Crang is a criminal lawyer. He loves jazz, old movies, Polish vodka, his Volkswagen convertible, and his girlfriend Annie, not necessarily in that order. A wise-cracking WASP with a moral code that owes little to the Law Society of Upper Canada, Crang is equally quick with his lip and fists, but he can tell a fish fork from a pair of brass knuckles when he has to. The clients who come to Crang's second-floor walk-up office on Toronto's Queen Street strip--street punks, two bit robbers, and small-time scam artists--are usually guilty. Crang likes it that way. Mostly he gets them off and they're grateful. So when Matthew Wansborough, wealthy financier and scion of a fine old family, comes to Crang with the novel problem that his $300,000 investment in Ace Disposal Services is too profitable, Crang is puzzled. Wansborough isn't Crang's usual kind of client and Ace isn't Wansborough's usual kind of blue-chip op
Classic Batten--on the rocksJazz. Cocaine. Vietnamese triads. Dope-dealing yuppie lawyers. Jack Batten's got them all in his second mystery novel starring Crang, the unconventional criminal lawyer with a taste for straight vodka and a nose for trouble. This time out Crang is hired by his buddy Dave Goddard, a sax player whose playing style is from the fifties, but whose unwitting involvement in a complex coke-smuggling ring is pure eighties.Crang's friendly offer to help Dave find out who is tailing him takes a reluctant sleuth into a series of unlikely behind the scenes at Toronto's oh-so-chic film festival; into a triad-run afterhours boozecan; and into the gang's inner sanctum, the office of Big Bam, the ring's genial but deadly kingpin.No one could ever accuse Crang of being a superhero, but with his usual mixture of innate cool and naive enthusiasm he brings the villains to justice and readers to the end of a cleverly entertaining romp that leaves us looking forward to Crang's next case.
Crang, the smart (and often smartass) criminal lawyer, finds himself embroiled in a mystery while on vacation on the French Riviera. Like all the criminal messes Crang has ever found himself caught up in, this one begins in perfect innocence. As Crang is leaving for a holiday on the French Riviera with his movie-critic girlfriend, Annie, his rich-as-Croesus former father-in-law appears to ask if he’d mind checking up on an errant family member who is said to be hanging out in Monaco. Crang says he’ll do the favour, a decision that drops him into a series of ever-tighter spots on the Côte d’Azur. Crang and Annie enjoy the Riviera’s pleasures, but lurking in the background, gathering menace, is a piece of elaborate fraud and murder. Crang has no choice except to solve all the riddles, nail the murderer and, if he’s adroit enough, eventually tip the scales of justice in the good guys’ favour.
At a time when gay communities were hidden worlds, Crang needs to root out a killer and do his best to right a grave wrong. At the height of the AIDS crisis in the early nineties, a close friend of Crang’s, Alex Corcoran, loses his partner, Ian, to the disease. After Ian’s death, Crang is enlisted by Alex to find the man who infected Ian. Crang searches for the man to prevent Alex from getting himself in trouble. However, when Alex is murdered, Crang owes it to his friends to find their killers. The case, which explores the gay scene in Toronto at a time when LGBT culture was still very much a hidden world and open persecution was commonplace, ends up involving a cabinet minister afraid of being exposed. A clever political mystery, Blood Count is also an emotional and moving story of a couple whose lives are devastated by AIDS and a community damaged by the prejudices of the world around them.
It's been twenty years since Crang, the Toronto criminal lawyer with the single name and the smart mouth, last sleuthed his way through deep trouble and tricky cases. Now, as witty and nervy as he was in such best sellers as Straight No Chaser and Riviera Blues , Crang has returned, and as usual, he's got problems. A client has skipped out on him, still owing Crang a very large fee. The client, a woman of great beauty and even greater treachery, just happens to be the co-mastermind of the biggest marijuana grow-op business in Canadian drug history. Crang cuts a few legal corners in his hunt for the fleeing client, but she soon becomes only the most elusive of his worries. Along the way, Crang finds himself confronting a major Toronto mob boss, a thug intent on maiming him, and an ugly case of murder. Will Crang survive the onslaught? Sometimes he can't help wondering. Crang remains the same, familiar off-beat guy from the earlier books. He loves vodka, jazz and smart repartee. His friends tend to be on the shady side of the law. Crang is still keeping romantic company with the delicious Annie, a freelance writer and a sharp-tongued match for Crang when batting around the dicey options that his practice in criminal law forces on him. Crang and Annie have just moved into their first house. It's in mid-town Toronto, and, like everything else in Take Five , it comes with hints of danger.
When his popular hip-hop artist client is blackmailed, Crang stumbles on a porn operation and an unexpected case of murder. Crang is a smart-talking criminal lawyer who doesn’t mind chasing down unorthodox cases. That makes him just the guy to represent a famous hip-hop performer who’s on the wrong end of a blackmail scheme. It doesn’t strike Crang as a confounding case, but in no time, he finds himself confronting an organized gang that deals in porn, stock swindles, and murder. Things get so messy that Crang decides he’ll have to bend the law to make things right. It’s a dilemma that would cause other lawyers to back away, but not Crang, the nervy attorney with the fast mouth.
Mystery-solving criminal lawyer Crang returns to investigate the disappearance of two rare books. Fletcher Marshall is a Toronto antiquarian book dealer, internationally respected in the business. One night, someone blows the safe in his office and makes off with the contents, which include an infamous forged first edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese that is in itself a collector’s item. Fletcher, who was still in the process of verifying the book, doesn’t even know whether it was the real thing or a clever forgery (of a forgery). But rather than summon the cops to investigate the theft, he turns to his pal Crang, the nervy criminal lawyer, hoping he can retrieve the books before their owner gets wind of the crime. The owner happens to be the richest woman in Canada and a tough cookie who could ruin Fletcher’s career. Crang gets on the hunt, learning much about the trade in musty books and the lucrative business it makes for forgers. Just as he seems to be getting close to answers, a shocking development makes things much more complicated ― and much more dangerous.