“Blake writes with a command of the language and a deft ear for dialogue that few novelists possess…. A World of Thieves is classic Blake, mixing violence with passion, the hardnose with the sensitive. No one out there does this better.”
—Tom Walker, book editor, Denver Post
“Blake is one of the more talented practitioners of tough-guy fiction…. A World of Thieves is a powerful book [with] compellingly drawn characters.”
—Tom Pilkington, Dallas Morning News
“In a splendid ode to hard-drinking Jazz Age desperadoes, James Carlos Blake jimmies open Cormac McCarthy’s safe and runs off with the twanging strings McCarthy brings to the American sentence…. Blake remains a poet of the damned who writes like anangel.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A hard-driving, entertaining novel full of outsized characters and as much humor as brutality.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Writing doesn’t get much better than this. Unforced, honest…. A novel that delivers. Fabulous and unforgettable.”
—New York Review of Fiction
“A deliciously visual story…. Blake seems to revel in biting off bigchunks of American history and letting the blood dribble between his teeth.”
—Austin Chronicle