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Shout at the Devil

A Jack Shannon Mystery (Book 2)

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What to expect

Hollywood, 1951. Jack Shannon—hobo, rising star, wounded vet, studio publicist—is in exile. Blackballed by the majors for his unauthorized effort to solve the mystery of a sexpot actress’ disappearance, he’s now a stuntman—a drug-store cowboy working from Tinseltown’s Poverty Row, where the budgets are tight and the jobs scarce.

As the work dries up, Jack is in danger of losing his home, but salvation arrives in the figure of Karen Scott, a star who needs help as much as Jack needs money. Years ago, she found herself homeless in Hollywood. In her desperation, she agreed to appear in a stag film, and now, someone has mailed her a snippet of that long-forgotten film. She expects a blackmail demand to follow, and she’s come to Jack for help. He handled this sort of thing as a publicist at Titanic Pictures, and she’s willing to pay him big bucks.

Jack has barely begun his investigation when the blackmail demand arrives: $50,000 in exchange for the negative. He reluctantly agrees to handle the pay-off for Karen, but when he arrives at the appointed spot, he finds a dead man seated behind the wheel of a car and is himself knocked out from behind. When he comes to consciousness, he discovers the blackmail money gone, no sign of the negative, and himself the major suspect in the murder.

Critics Review

“Hold your breath as Dan Bronson sucks us back into the whirling cesspool of 1950s Hollywood with his accidental detective Jack Shannon coming to the aid of ‘sultry, sensuous and sassy’ Karen Scott, star of the silver screen. Crackling with lively dialogue and shocking glimpses of Tinseltown tawdriness, Bronson’s latest is an irresistible page-turner filled with hairpin twists and turns, blackmail, mayhem, and murder.”

Movie Guys

“A timeless tale that takes you back in time to wander the darkest reaches of 1951 Hollywood, bringing then into the noirish now.”

Thomas Lee Wright, screenwriter and Academy Award–nominated producer

“Like Phillip Marlowe, Lew Archer, and Harry Bosch, Jack Shannon has a distinctive voice, a voice resonant with his experience as the survivor of a brutal childhood, a participant in the assault on Omaha Beach and the Battle of the Bulge, and a Hollywood player exiled to Poverty Row. It is in this mesmerizing voice—cynical, ironic, self-deprecating, and funny—that Jack recounts the story of a blackmail attempt on a beautiful movie star leading the reader through a world full of deceptions and traps to a shocking conclusion.”

Stephen Galloway, former executive editor, Hollywood Reporter

“Be careful. I made the mistake of deciding to just glance at the first page and then call it a night. Right. Long after midnight, I finally staggered off to bed, a bleary-eyed but well-satisfied wreck. No doubt about it. Shout at the Devil is the very definition of a page-turner.”

Jameson Parker, author of Dancing with the Dead

“Bronson does it again, from the great title and knockout first line on through a seamless blend of noir and movie-savvy background. Add a playful, yet moving romance as a bonus, along with lots of humorous asides, and it’s a tough-to-put-down gem, a joy from start to finish.”

Douglas Soesbe, screenwriter, former Story Editor at Tri-Star and Universal

“Propulsive, atmospheric, spot-on in its period detail, Shout at the Devil reads like a lost manuscript from the Golden Age of LA noir. And Jack Shannon is the perfect anti-hero for a deep dive into the dark murk beneath Hollywood’s glamorous veneer.”

Malcolm Brooks, author of Painted Horses

“If you like the tough-guy detective novels and films of the forties and fifties, you’ll love Dan Bronson’s Shout at the Devil, which is loaded with movie stars, murder, gangsters, and blackmail, and gives you a spellbinding look at the seedy side of Hollywood, the side the studios never wanted you to see.”

Phillip Margolin, New York Times bestselling author
Author Dan Bronson
Narrator Jack Daniel
Series A Jack Shannon Mystery
Duration 7 hours and 23 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9798228315969
Format Audiobook
Publisher BearManor Media
Genre Crime and mystery fiction, Crime and mystery: hard-boiled crime, noir fiction, Historical crime and mysteries, Thriller / suspense fiction
Availability AU, GB, IE, US

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