Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dirty Hit | 2013 | Paul Mann | Buy |
| 2 | Sweet Kill | 2013 | Paul Mann | Buy |
| 3 | Die Cool | 2018 | Paul Mann | Buy |
The Splatter Trilogy is Paul Mann’s late-career series, three crime novels built around a mob hit man named Johnny Mondo. The tone is a long way from the literary crime fiction of the George Sansi books. These are fast, bloody, and darkly comic stories about a killer who solves every problem with violence.
Dirty Hit, the first book, opens with Johnny Mondo finding out there is a contract on his head from the New York mob. He flees to Nashville, figuring nobody will look for him there. Sweet Kill picks up the action and moves it to the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. Die Cool, published five years later in 2018, wraps up the trilogy. Mann clearly had fun with these, leaning into pulp fiction territory after decades of more serious thrillers. The books are short, punchy reads that do not pretend to be anything other than violent entertainment.