Grant Tracey

Grant Tracey is the author of the Hayden Fuller Mystery series, as well as many other crime noir and literary stories. He teaches film and creative writing at University of Northern Iowa and is a long-serving editor of North American Review. His Hayden Fuller novels are Cheap Amusements, A Fourth Face, Neon Kiss, and A Shoeshine Kill. The first three novels are available as stand-alone books and in the collection Five Hard Bites along with the novella Day of the Dragons and the short story “Shot, Reverse Shot.”

Grant’s detective fiction has also been published in Freedom Fiction Journal, Femmes Fatale Flashes, Groovy Gumshoes, Tough, Magpie Lit, Twelve Winters Journal, Bang! and Merry Creepsmas: The Green Book. The chapbook Winsome/Bend of the Sun was published by Final Thursday Press. Moreover, Twelve Winters brought out Final Stanzas, a collection of literary short stories; and Toronto, 1965: Cheap Amusements’ Beat, a memoir. He co-hosts the podcast A Lesson before Writing with Brady Harrison and Ted Morrissey.

In addition to writing, teaching and editing, Grant is active in community theater as both an actor and director. Having grown up in Toronto, Grant is an avid Maple Leafs fan.

The Hayden Fuller Mystery Novels

Cheap Amusements

Ninety-three days ago a girl went missing, only to be found in a suitcase, two bullets behind her right ear. Hayden Fuller worked that case and now he’s working another that’s eerily similar: a missing young woman, no ransom note, and clues pointing to a high school guidance counselor. Fuller, an ex-hockey player drummed out of the NHL for taking salacious pix of a cheating husband (and teammate), now finds himself slipping back into Maple Leaf Gardens and clashing with a demimonde of corrupt CEOs, gangsters, prostitutes, and porn. With the help of a maverick reporter, tough guy Fuller navigates a host of double crosses and betrayals. But will he find the girl in time? 94, 95, 96 days and counting … “A fun thriller, and thrilling fun,” says Thomas Fox Averill, author of A Carol Dickens Christmas. Available in cloth (temporarily unavailable), paperback and Kindle editions.

A Fourth Face

Former NHL teammate Bobby Ehle hires Hayden Fuller to investigate the brutal murder of his ex-wife. Chances are Ehle, who has a history of domestic violence, may have done it. Fuller’s investigation drops him into a world of domestic terrorism (a revolutionary group, N’oublie jamais, plans to ruin Expo 67), psychedelic drugs (Blue 27 and Red 45) that can drastically change people’s personalities, and faux doctors with their hydrotherapy treatments and plastic surgery services. His quest takes an inner turn as Fuller confronts his own personal trauma and troubled past. On top of all this he reconnects with ex, Stana Younger. Together, can they solve one murder and prevent several more? A Fourth Face is a follow up to the debut Hayden Fuller Mystery, Cheap Amusements. Available in cloth (temporarily unavailable), paperback and Kindle editions.

Neon Kiss

Remembrance Day, 1965, and Hayden Fuller is named the game’s third star. But the celebration is short-lived as he learns of his father’s murder. With less than three days to solve the crime before returning to the Habs for a home-and-home series against Detroit, Fuller tumbles into the clutches of a cult, the Peoples Way to Christ and their forthcoming Black Mass, the Whiftields, a Rosedale family who made their money in munitions, home security systems, and corruption, and the Defeatniks, a group of University of Toronto students who live their lives on the edges, and seek to “dismantle the universe.” While searching for the brains behind this dismantling Fuller also undergoes a personal journey, one of betrayal, darkness, and ultimately forgiveness. The Collector’s Edition of Neon Kiss includes the author’s introduction “Crime Noir and the Poetics of Uncertainty.” Available in hardcover, paperback and Kindle editions.

Five Hard Bites

In these five hard-bitten tales, PI Hayden Fuller searches for a missing girl while tangling with a sex ring; mixes it up with N’oublie jamais, while dealing with a domestic abuse case; investigates his father’s murder and tumbles onto a cult and a leader who wants to “dismantle the universe”; dukes it out with Nazis in Bannerville, Pop 1201, and their “triumph of redemption” featuring mechanical dragons; and stumbles through a demi-monde of underground filmmakers while busting up a sex trafficking ring. Fuller, with his fists and snub-nosed .38, unpacks a host of lies as each narrative builds to a shock ending. His is a pyrrhic journey, for in the dark, Fuller finds something more than night. The collection includes three complete novels–Cheap Amusements, A Fourth Face, and Neon Kiss–as well as the novella Day of the Dragons and the short story “Shot, Reverse Shot,” plus a Hayden Fuller Timeline. Available in a paperback edition.

A Shoeshine Kill

It’s the Summit Series: Canada vs the Soviet Union, 1972, and the whole country is talking hockey. Against a backdrop of Cold War tension, with his country’s pride on the line, hockey-pro-turned-private-eye Hayden Fuller is enmeshed in two crimes. One involves a shoeshine boy murdered in the heart of Toronto’s gay scene. The other centers around the University of Toronto, a tight knit writers workshop, and a disgruntled former student, from the grave, leveling plagiarism charges against a beloved English professor. When a young woman named Abby steps forward with connections to both murders, Fuller is “out on the ice” again, the underdog racing against a countdown clock and a powerful opponent. It’s up to him to solve both crimes, before Abby or anyone else turns up dead. Available in a hardcover and paperback editions.

Also by Grant Tracey from Twelve Winters

Final Stanzas

In these eleven short stories by a true master of the form, Grant Tracey guides us across a wide expanse of time and place but always deep into the interior lives of the characters we encounter. From 1918 New York to 1971 Toronto to contemporary Cedar Falls, Iowa – instantly we become involved in the complex relationships of movie actors, college professors, school custodians, teenagers, housewives – always firmly and richly enmeshed in their cultures via copious allusions to history, literature, cinema, TV, and the slang that punctuates their spot-on dialogue. Final Stanzas is a tour de force by a writer who is always mindful of his craft and attentive to the minutest of details. Available in paperback, Kindle and audiobook editions.

Toronto, 1965: Cheap Amusements’ Beat

In this touching and amusing memoir, author Grant Tracey reflects on growing up in Toronto in the 1960s, his love affair with hockey and hardboiled detective novels, and the genesis of his detective protagonist Hayden Fuller. “Hockey is part of the city’s infrastructure and immigrant fabric,” writes Grant, “and Toronto is a city of immigrants.” To date, Grant’s Hayden Fuller Mysteries include the novels Cheap Amusements, A Fourth Face, and Neon Kiss, as well as other novellas and short stories. Available in a Kindle edition.

Other Grant Tracey Detective Fiction
Available Online

“A Borsalino Kill” (in Merry Creepsmas: The Green Book)
“This Town Call Winsome” (in Freedom Fiction)
“Thursday’s Money” (in Freedom Fiction)
“The Key Witness” (in Tough)
“The Salinger Files” (in Twelve Winters Journal Volume I)
“The Final Portrait” (in Twelve Winters Journal Volume II)
“The Gray Hearse” (in Magpie Lit, Issue #19, see pages 34-42)

Interviews with Grant Tracey

Demystifying the Novel Writing Process
On the Release of Five Hard Bites
Editor Interview / Grant Tracey
On the Release of A Fourth Face
On the Release of Cheap Amusements
On the Release of Final Stanzas

Grant Tracey Videos

Grant Tracey Reading from Neon Kiss
Grant Tracey Reading in Albuquerque, NM
Grant Tracey Reading from Five Hard Bites
Book Trailer for Cheap Amusements
Book Trailer for Final Stanzas

Craft Essays by Grant Tracey

“Finding Room to Swing in Ed Lacy’s Crime Fiction”
“John D. MacDonald’s The Executioners and and the Melodramatic Imagination”
“Ed McBain’s King’s Ransom and Staging in Triangles”
“Crime Sensibility: The Art of Raymond Chandler”

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