'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 operation. Crang's unorthodox investigation of Ace reveals that it's a dirty player in a dirty business, run by men who oil the wheels of commerce with kickbacks, fraud, muscle--and murder. Mystery and comedy mix in this entertaining novel, written with the in-depth knowledge of the legal scene and the easygoing style that have made bestsellers of Batten's previous books. Once readers have made the acquaintance of Crang, they will be eager to read of his future cases in what promises to be a long and successful series.

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.

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 theman 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.

Classic Batten--on the rocks Jazz. 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 locales: 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 leavesAbout the AuthorJack Batten, after a brief and unhappy career as a lawyer, has been a very happy Toronto freelance writer for many years. He has written thirty five books including four crime novels featuring Crang, the unorthodox criminal lawyer who has a bad habit of stumbling on murders that need his personal attention. Batten reviewed jaz for The Globe and Mail for several years, reviewed movies on CBC Radio for twenty-five-years, and now reviews crime novels for The Toronto Star. Not Surprisingly, jazz, movies and crime turn up frequently in Crang's life. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.Fenk's face was the color of a Santa Claus suit. His mouth was slack, and his eyes popped in a way that made the irises seem smaller and the white parts larger. He didn't look as bad-tempered in death as in life. He looked scared. The cord must have hurt like hell."Oh my God.""What the matter?" James asked, holding position at the door."Nothing that's part of your job," I answered James.I opened the saxophone case. No strap. I looked back at Fenk. The strap was buried in his neck, the strap that held Dave Goddard's saxophone when he played it.

Dutiful nurse, hospital matron, courageous resistance fighter, Edith Cavell was all of these. A British citizen, the forty-eight-year-old Cavell was matron of an institute for nurses in the suburbs of Brussels at the outbreak of World War I. Dedicated to the methods of Florence Nightingale, her intelligence and ferocious sense of duty had transformed the institute into a leading training center.When the Germans captured Belgium in the fall of 1914, an organization was formed to assist British and French soldiers trapped behind German lines. Edith was asked to help and she didn't hesitate. From that moment forward, Edith sheltered escaping soldiers in her hospital, using trickery to keep the suspicious Germans from discovering them. She helped arrange a secret route to neutral Holland and back to England at great personal risk, enabling soldiers of all ranks to slip through German lines. Using the institute as part of an elaborate Allied escape route, Edith Cavell was...

Mystery-solving criminal lawyer Crang returns to investigate the disappearance of two rare books. Fletcher Marshall is a Toronto antiquarian book dealer, internationallyrespected in the business. One night, someone blows the safe in his officeand makes off with the contents, which include an infamous forged firstedition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguesethat is in itself a collector's item. Fletcher, who was still in the processof verifying the book, doesn't even know whether it was the real thingor a clever forgery (of a forgery). But rather than summon the cops toinvestigate the theft, he turns to his pal Crang, the nervy criminal lawyer,hoping he can retrieve the books before their owner gets wind of thecrime. The owner happens to be the richest woman in Canada and a toughcookie who could ruin Fletcher's career.Crang gets on the hunt, learning much about the trade in mustybooks and the lucrative business it makes for...

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.