Green Sun

By: Kent Anderson

Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell

Top-10 mysteries and thrillers for spring (Publishers Weekly)

"One of the unsung heroes of crime fiction" (Chicago Tribune), Kent Anderson, returns after two decades with this dazzling novel about justice, character, and fate, set against the backdrop of an American city at war with itself.

Oakland, California, 1983: a city churning with violent crime and racial conflict. Officer Hanson, a Vietnam veteran, has abandoned academia for the life-and-death clarity of police work, a way to live with the demons that followed him home from the war.

But Hanson knows that justice requires more than simply enforcing the penal code. He believes in becoming a part of the community he serves - which is why, unlike most officers, he chooses to live in the same town where he works. This strategy serves him well...to a point. He forges a precarious friendship with Felix Maxwell, the drug king of East Oakland, based on their shared sense of fairness and honor. He falls in love with Libya the moment he sees her, a confident and outspoken black woman. He is befriended by Weegee, a streetwise 11-year-old who is primed to become a dope dealer.

Every day, every shift, tests a cop's boundaries between the man he wants to be and the officer of the law he's required to be. At last an off-duty shooting forces Hanson to finally face who he is, and which side of the law he belongs on.

©2018 Kent Anderson (P)2018 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"Green Sun succeeds on so many levels, it's hard to keep count.... Hanson is a fascinating and memorable character, but the real star of Green Sun is Anderson's writing.... He's a compassionate writer who never wastes a single word.... 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. Above all, it's a stunning meditation on power, violence and the intractability of pain, which Anderson seems to understand all too well." (Michael Schaub, NPR )

"Deeply moving.... Anderson's model of community policing couldn't be more timely." (Publishers Weekly)

"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." (Michael Connelly)

"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. In Oaklandese: If I'm lyin', I'm flyin'!" (James Ellroy)

"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." (James Patterson)

Excellent. Still feels VERY timely.

I love this conclusion to the Hanson trilogy. Wish he wrote more books in general.

Don’t wait so long for the next one!

Awesome Anderson. Kent Anderson displays once again why he is the literary cop/professor of our time. Brilliant prose, Angst, and emotion. What’s next?

An Unusual and Rich Story

Kent Anderson does not simply write; he richly paints with words and surrounds his characters with luscious, beautiful and violent detail that strikes the heart of the reader and leaves a permanent mark. Officer Hanson will live somewhere inside my mind forever. This novel is a most vividly intimate portrayal of a troubled, flawed man struggling to rise above his past and his present. I held my breath wondering what would happen to him and to the equally rich characters with whom he interacted daily. A masterpiece and a truthful tale of the life of a police officer, built in layer upon layer of complicated thoughts, feelings and decisions on the part of everyone in the book. A story of hope rising in a place of deep hopelessness. Make this a must-listen and you won't regret it.