March 2015
Photo © LeeAnn Lapicca.
Dave White is a Derringer Award-winning mystery author and educator. White, an eighth grade teacher for the Clifton, NJ Public School district, attended Rutgers University and received his MAT from Montclair State University. His 2002 short story "Closure," won the Derringer Award for Best Short Mystery Story the following year. Publishers Weekly gave the first two novels in his Jackson Donne series, When One Man Dies and The Evil That Men Do, starred reviews, calling When One Man Dies an "engrossing, evocative debut novel" and writing that his second novel "fulfills the promise of his debut." He received praise from crime fiction luminaries such as bestselling, Edgar Award-winning Laura Lippman and the legendary James Crumley.
Both When One Man Dies and The Evil That Men Do were nominated for the prestigious Shamus Award, and When One Man Dies was nominated for the Strand Critics Award for "Best First Novel". His standalone thriller, Witness To Death, was an ebook bestseller upon release and named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. All three books have been reissued by Polis Books and are available wherever ebooks are sold.
The third book in his acclaimed Jackson Donne series, Not Even Past: a Jackson Donne novel, was published in February 2015 by Polis Books.
"White is one of a group of younger writers reimagining the P.I. novel by giving Donne solid connections to his culture (he's not alienated from his world) and a moral self-awareness I think is more interesting than the traditional P.I. code of behavior. This book flies."
—Carole Barrowman, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
"Intricate plotting and nonstop action make this a nail-biting read from start to finish. White, winner of the Derringer Award for When One Man Dies, is a writer to watch."
—Library Journal
"Stunning...fulfills the promise of his debut...the author does such a fine job of depicting the inner conflicts of his fallible but ultimately heroic protagonist."
—Publishers Weekly
"Derringer Award-winner White's engrossing, evocative debut novel will grab most readers from its opening sentences: ‘I've killed three men in my life. One the police know about, two that I've kept to myself."
—Publishers Weekly, ***Starred Review***
Not Even Past by
Finally, Jackson Donne has it figured out. After leaving the private investigation business, he's looking toward the future -- and getting married to Kate Ellison. Donne is focused on living the good life -- planning the wedding, finishing college, and anticipating a Hawaiian honeymoon -- until he receives an anonymous email with a link and an old picture of him on the police force. Once Donne clicks the link, nothing else in his life matters. Donne sees a live-stream of the onething he never expected. Six years ago, his fiancée, Jeanne Baker died in a car accident with a drunk driver. Or so Donne thought. He’s taken to a video of Jeanne bound to a chair, bruised and screaming, but very much alive. He starts to investigate, but quickly finds out he’s lost most of his contacts over the years. The police hold a grudge going back to the days when he turned in his corrupt colleagues, and neither they nor the FBI are willing to believe a dead girl’sbeen kidnapped. Donne turns to Bill Martin -- the only man to love Jeanne as much as he did -- for help. And that decision could cost him everything.
The Evil That Men Do by
Even generations later, you can't escape. . .the evil that men do. Stripped of his private investigator’s license and slumming it as a night security guard at a Jersey storage facility, Jackson Donne thinks he’s finally hit rock bottom. Then the bottom really falls out: The sister he hasn’t seen in years shows up, needing help. Turns out Donne’s Alzheimer’s-stricken mother has begun hinting at long-buried family secrets from her hospital bed, suggesting a sinister–even murderous–past. Meanwhile, Donne’s relatives are suddenly being greeted by blackmail, car bombs, and bullets to the back of the skull. All Donne wants is to disappear–preferably into a nice frosty pint glass–but he soon realizes that his only chance at saving his family, and himself, is by solving a mystery more than sixty years old. Now he needs to figure out how a hit man, crooked cops, corrupt politics, a kidnapping, and the city of Bayonne all fit together. He’ll discover that old family secrets still have the power to kill in this razor-sharp PI story that makes classic noir new again.
When One Man Dies by
A hit and run. Simple as that. And suddenly harmless old Gerry Figuroa is lying dead on the asphalt. New Jersey cop turned private investigator Jackson Donne sure as hell doesn’t want to investigate his drinking buddy’s death, but he’s made a promise that leaves him no choice. And before long, he’s drawing uncomfortably close to a murderer. Meanwhile, an apparently routine divorce case takes a dangerous turn, and sinister connections to Gerry’s death start to emerge. Just when it seems things can’t get any worse, Donne learns that a bitter old enemy is mixed up in the whole mess. Bill Martin, his ex–Narcotics Department partner, has secrets to expose that could reopen the still-aching wounds of Donne’s past. Permanently. Donne would like nothing better than to crawl back into a bottle and forget he ever heard Gerry Figuroa’s name, but it’s too late for that. Now he’s in way too deep, tangled up in a plot whose tendrils reach far into his town’s past—and his own.
