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Hardcase is a 2001 novel by American writer Dan Simmons. It is the first of three hardboiled detective novels featuring the character of Joe Kurtz.
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A series of high-speed fatal car wrecks -- accidents that seem. as if they may have been staged -- is leading Darwin Minor down a dangerous road. A reluctantexpert on violent ways to die, he sifts clues from wreckage the way a brilliant coroner extracts damning information from a victim's corpse. But the deeper …
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In the distant future, a wandering acting troupe performs the plays of Shakespeare for a series of increasingly important alien species, with evidence that the fate of all humanity may rest on the quality of their work.