strange. In interviews John Shannon has expressed his belief that the Jack Liffey books are as much novels of redemption as they are mysteries. He could be speaking of his own character when he says, as he has of writer Kent Anderson, that: "Our surrogate adventurers have to face the ugly and cruel every day, and every day they have to reinvent human decency, out of nothing." It is a statement that offers clear echoes of Raymond Chandler's famed description of the private eye: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness." The Shannon-Chandler connection is one that has been frequently noted by critics. For example, in the Los Angeles Times mystery writer Dick Lochte has written that "Shannon has done a remarkable update on the Chandler knight-errant" and Chicago Tribune reviewer Dick Adler called Shannon "the hands-down winner in the long-running 'Where is the Next Raymond Chandler Coming From?' sweepstakes." Moreover, in the Jack Liffey novels, the city of Los Angeles itself maintains an ongoing starring role. Said Crime Time magazine in 2008: "Shannon's entertaining and well-written books, with their investigations of crime, corruption, shady deals, disaster capitalism and fundamentalist culture constitute nothing short of a social history of modern day Los Angeles. About City of Strangers, the Los Angeles Times pronounced: "Shannon dishes out L.A. local color dipped deep in moral sauce." Reviewing The Dark Streets, Publishers Weekly commented: "Shannon once again skillfully dissects the sociocultural landscape of Los Angeles." While the late James Crumley had this to say: “The landscape of Los Angeles, both actually and metaphorically, has been deconstructed by writers from West to Chandler to Didion, but never quite as artfully as John Shannon does it.” John Shannon has also contributed short stories to the anthologies Murder on the Ropes, Ed. Otto Penzler, New Millennium Press, 2001 and Politics Noir, ed. Gary Phillips, Verso, 2008, and FourStory Magazine. Bibliography The Jack Liffey Novels 1. The Concrete River, 1996 " ... John Shannon writes of a contemporary