It is a hardboiled detective story set in an affluent Californian high school where everyone speaks a wonderful mixture of teen slang and 70-year-old pulp lingo.

ECONOMIST: Independent films

The festival's four egg contests include a five-minute hardboiled-egg eating contest, usually winnable with 25, and egg roulette, where contestants smash one of six eggs against their face.

WSJ: Big Chocolate Eggs May Be Big, but Big Hen's Eggs Not So Much

But unlike so many pretentious works of fiction today, Estleman's hardboiled, Detroit-based tales of intrigue, wrongdoing and, ultimately, justice develop three-dimensional, often unforgettable characters (among them in this book, a Larry Flynt-like pornographer) set in finely wrought, factually described settings.

FORBES: Fact And Comment

Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, as well as a neighbor of the mobster Frank Costello and a confidant of Roosevelt's inner circle, even a sometimes guest invited to the White House to amuse the president over a drink the in-the-know street fighter and hardboiled man about town whom his enemies feared and who was on our side.

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