‘The world’s best crime writer’ Metro
‘The best of what crime fiction can do’ Michael Connelly
‘Fearsomely authentic and moving’ Daily Mail
‘Tells the unvarnished truth about what it is to be a cop’ James Patterson
A 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist
The acclaimed author of Night Dogs and Sympathy for the Devil returns with a blistering new novel – his first in over 20 years.
Hanson thought he had witnessed the worst of humanity after a tour of duty in Vietnam and a stint as a cop in Oregon. Then he moves to Oakland, California to join the under-funded, understaffed police department.
Unlike the rest of the white officers, Hanson takes seriously his duty to serve and protect the black community of East Oakland.
He will encounter prejudice and hate on both sides of the line… and struggle to keep true to himself against powerful opposition and personal danger.
Green Sun is a raw, unflinching novel about America’s divided cities and one man’s divided soul.
‘The best of what crime fiction can do’ Michael Connelly
‘Fearsomely authentic and moving’ Daily Mail
‘Tells the unvarnished truth about what it is to be a cop’ James Patterson
A 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist
The acclaimed author of Night Dogs and Sympathy for the Devil returns with a blistering new novel – his first in over 20 years.
Hanson thought he had witnessed the worst of humanity after a tour of duty in Vietnam and a stint as a cop in Oregon. Then he moves to Oakland, California to join the under-funded, understaffed police department.
Unlike the rest of the white officers, Hanson takes seriously his duty to serve and protect the black community of East Oakland.
He will encounter prejudice and hate on both sides of the line… and struggle to keep true to himself against powerful opposition and personal danger.
Green Sun is a raw, unflinching novel about America’s divided cities and one man’s divided soul.
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Reviews
The best cop novel I have ever read. There's never been anything like it.
Kent Anderson has crafted a literary miracle here. We're transported to 'Nam and circa-'80 Oakland, reimagined as Hell, seen through the eyes of a crusading cop unique in the annals of police literature. This jazzy - and jazz influenced - novel is like the best of early Joseph Wambaugh.
Green Sun tells the unvarnished truth about what it is to be a cop in modern day America. I can give a suspense novel no higher compliment
Kent Anderson serves up the best of what crime fiction can do in Green Sun, showing us a slice of the world that stands for the whole wide world, and giving us Officer Hanson, whose perseverance and bedrock fairness and understanding of human frailty make him a hero for all places and times. The Hanson Trilogy should not be a secret. It's the best of the best in American storytelling today.
Kent Anderson immediately pulls you into his taut, authentic depiction of a cop's life in early-80s Oakland. Green Sun is crime fiction at its best: smart, unflinching, and, ultimately, compassionate.
Deeply moving...couldn't be more timely
Anderson doesn't publish much, but when he does, it's something to remember...It is perhaps the perfect time for an honest, realistic, unflinching portrayal of a good cop, and Anderson delivers just that.
Anderson was, like his maverick hero, a Vietnam vet, an Oakland cop and an English lecturer - experiences that give this fiction the compelling authenticity other writers strive for.
Kent Anderson is the finest portrayer of the cop novel, elevating the genre to the highest literary form. With Green Sun, he completes a trilogy that would sit effortlessly alongside the masters, Cormac McCarthy and James Lee Burke. This is Ellroy for a whole new generation.
Kent Anderson is one of the unsung legends of crime fiction
This is only Kent Anderson's third novel in 30-odd years but it's worth the wait...There's a wealth of hard-won knowledge, if not much conventional plot, in this brilliant, subtle, finally optimistic, cop novel.
Fearsomely authentic and moving, it paints a scary portrait of an officer's life
Anderson is adept at finding a terrible kind of beauty in the worst circumstances, which makes Green Sun difficult to put down even when it's emotionally painful to keep reading.
You might sign up for the promise of thrills but you'll leave utterly sated by the very human magic of the finest crime writer alive.