Threshold by Bonnie Kozek (and a giveaway!)

From the release from Author Marketing Experts, Inc. :

When a haunting past - which has left a couple of dead bodies in its wake - becomes a too painful predictor of the future, Honey McGuinness moves to Skid Row. She hires on at the local Salvation Mission - serving food to the homeless.

For awhile things go pretty smoothly: No one seems to be getting hurt. Her world becomes small and anonymous - her only real friend a prose-spouting diffident drunk named Billy. But like it or not, things change. Bad things start to happen.

Gentrification, crack and crime get a stranglehold on the neighborhood. And, when her friend Billy dies in her arms from a hailstorm of bullets, and she discovers a tape-recording device strapped to his waist, her refuge is in peril. Against her will, she is thrust right back into the slough. And, to sate the hunger for retribution that is gnawing in her gut, Honey will have to answer one fateful question: Is there any line she is unwilling to cross? Find out in Threshold, the debut novel of Bonnie Kozek.

About the author: Bonnie Kozek has written two works of nonfiction: Falling In and Out of Love . . . with Words, and Mania, a poetry book published in 2003. She also writes and produces oral histories through her company, Legacy Publishing. She has collaborated on numerous projects outside the realm of the written word with other artists, including Salvador Dali. She has worked as a sound/picture editor on features and documentaries for both big and little screens in Hollywood and New York, and has written and directed shorts, including films for Saturday Night Live. She created the first continuous running holographic movie, which premiered at the opening of the Museum of Holography in Manhattan.

She worked at and attended California Institute of the Arts. She has taught in the graduate writing program at The New School, and continues to teach writing workshops at FEGS and JCCA, both not-for-profit multicultural human services agencies in NYC. Her work has been recognized and honored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation. Visit http://www.bonniekozek.com/.

My Review:
I won this on a quick giveaway from Melissa at Melissa's Bookshelf. It sounded interesting to me so I wanted to give it a shot. I'm pretty new to hard-boiled suspense/thriller books reading pretty much just the typical mainstream thrillers. I'm glad I got this book. It was a fast, enjoyable read. I really enjoyed the character of Honey McGuinness. She is not perfect, she has had a hard life and she knows it, but she moves on with her life. She has a lot of depth and even though she is not all good, she is really trying and she will do what she can for those she cares for, such as finding out who murdered her friend Billy, even if she has to risk her life, sanity and all she has worked for up until this point to find the murderer. The suspense line of the book was interesting, but I feel that the characters make the book, from the hardened character of Honey to the cowboy-cop, Skinner and the miscellaneous crew from Skid Row, you learn about all of them and their good and bad traits. The book had a very satisfactory ending but left me excited enough about the character of Honey to read the next in the series which will be out this year. I highly suggest reading Threshold if you enjoy suspense/thrillers with the hard-boiled edge, or even if you're not sure if you do and just want to try them. I think this is a wonderful book to try out the genre.

Rating: 4.5/5.0
Title: Threshold: A Hard-boiled Thriller
Author: Bonnie Kozek
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
ISBN: 978/0595497584
Publication Date: December 2008
Pages: 132
Price: $11.95
Publisher: iUniverse.com

I (with permission of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.) am giving away my copy of Threshold by Bonnie Kozek so another reader can enjoy this great book!

Usual rules apply:

Entries can be made by the following (put all of your entries in one comment, I'll count them):
1. Comment for the first entry (make sure I have a way to contact you)
2. Become a follower or subscribe to my blog for another entry (or let me know you are currently a follower/subscriber).
3. Follow me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/cfulcher) (or let me know if you already follow me)
4. Tweet this or post on your blog about this contest (+1 for each)

The contest will go through next Monday, April 20th and I'll announce the winner on the 21st.