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"Hard-boiled urban noir police procedural"

He served in the Special Forces as a black-ops agent before mustering out. The CIA hired him as a free lance mercenary to fight in Sarajevo. When he received a severe head injury while in service to his country, the agency obtained a job for him in the Baltimore County Police Department. After his last case, when he went outside the box and did something illegal but very just (see RED RAIN), Luther Ewing resolves to play by the rules.

When he gets shot outside his apartment building, he doesn't have a clue who wants him dead though he is working undercover looking for crystal meth operations. When he is discharged from the hospital and back in the field, he discovers in the woods a trailer where the drug is manufactured. This leads him to the heads of the organization. A DEA agent includes Luther in a sting operation that will bring down all the players in the area. Luther realizes that he has been set up so once again he must bend the rules if he wants to stay alive and take out a rogue DEA agent.

THE BITE is a hard-boiled urban noir police procedural that starts at light speed and continues at warp drive. In another time and place, the protagonist would have been a powerful warrior king but in today's society he has trouble obeying rules that let criminals go free. He is a good man with a kind heart who plays dirty when the need arises. Michael Crow has written a powerful thriller that forces the audience to take sides on the issue of might makes right.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted May 16, 2003

Rave reviews greeted the debut of undercover Baltimore County narcotics cop Luther Ewing. In The Bite, this edgy black-Vietnamese Special Forces veteran is trying hard to chill, staying away from anything more dangerous than busting teenagers with Ecstasy or scouring the deep woods for crystal meth cooked up by rednecks and bikers. But one night someone takes a shot at Luther with a .45 in his own peaceful suburban parking lot-someone who's careful not to kill him. Who? Why? And what's the message?

Then brash, sexy DEA agent Francesca Russo elbows her way into his life, in a joint operation they pull off with suspicious ease. But it turns out she has her own agenda-to take over the crank business from the inside-and wants Luther on her team. He has a simple, stark choice: turn rogue and clean up Russo and her mob himself or call in the feds on one of their own. Staccato violence, gut-real characters, and miles of style keep The Bite's pages turning until the last clip has been emptied.