Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Black Hills
WORK NOTES: with brother, Franklin Schneider
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: New York
STATE: NY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.amazon.com/Jennifer-Schneider/e/B01GSIGN7G/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2?qid=1476100869&sr=1-2 * https://johnbvaleri.wordpress.com/2016/10/10/siblings-in-suspense-franklin-jennifer-schneider-on-black-hills-qa/ * http://www.crimethrillerhound.co.uk/black-hills * http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/theater-arts/black-hills-unraveling-crime-grimy-south-dakota-oil-town-article-1.2841275
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:University of Wyoming, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Iowa natives Jennifer and Franklin Schneider are a sister-and-brother writing team. Together, they wrote Black Hills, a noir thriller set against the backdrop of fracking in a small South Dakota town. Jennifer holds an M.F.A. from the University of Wyoming and now lives in New York City. Her brother studied writing at the University of Iowa and now lives in Washington, DC. Franklin’s true stories about repeatedly being fired from various jobs became so popular that he collected them in his 2010 memoir, Canned: How I Lost Ten Jobs in Ten Years and Learned to Love Unemployment.
Published in 2016, Black Hills centers on the exploits of New York-based private investigator Alice Riley, who travels to the Badlands boomtown of Whitehurst, South Dakota, to work on a case involving her ex-boss’s husband, Bobby. A surveyor for a fracking company at the huge Bakken oil field, Bobby has been charged with assault. In Whitehurst, a male-dominated town where most of the women are sex workers, Riley not only gains insight into the lucrative fracking industry but also becomes embroiled in the local underground of human trafficking and illegal trade of a dangerous stimulant called devil dust. To aid her investigation, Riley joins forces with Bobby’s girlfriend, a street-smart prostitute named Kim.
A writer in Publishers Weekly found the plot of Black Hills to be “weighed down by wooden characters and unconvincingly facile motivations” and added that the story “oversimplifies a highly complex economic and social phenomenon.” On the other hand, Cedar Rapid Gazette correspondent Rob Cline gave the book a thumbs-up and praised its explicit sex and drugs action for being devoid of sentimentality. Black Hills, wrote Cline, “is a solid first entry in what could become a gripping series. Alice Riley isn’t a character readers will like or admire, but she is complex.” Writing in the New York Daily News, Amanda Douville offered a similarly positive assessment: “Black Hills is a fast paced and very entertaining read full of unpredictable twists and turns. The main character, Alice, is sexy, smart and fearless but also carries a lot of baggage from her failed marriage and career as her flaws.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, August 8, 2016, review of Black Hills, p. 46.
ONLINE
Cedar Rapids Gazette, http://www.thegazette.com (October 23, 2016), Rob Cline, review of Black Hills.
Crime Thriller Hound, http://www.crimethrillerhound.co.uk (May 10, 2017), review of Black Hills.
John B. Valeri Blog, https://johnbvaleri.wordpress.com (October 10, 2016), “Siblings in Suspense: Franklin and Jennifer Schneider on Black Hills.“
New York Daily News, http://www.nydailynews.com (October 23, 2016), Amanda Douville, review of Black Hills.
ennifer Schneider lives and works in New York City. She has an MFA from the University of Wyoming. She writes with her brother Frank Schneider often; BLACK HILLS is their first published project together.
Black Hills
263.32 (Aug. 8, 2016): p46.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Black Hills
Franklin Schneider and Jennifer Schneider.
Thomas & Mercer, $15.95 trade paper (330p) ISBN 978-1-5039-3931-8
Schneider, the author of the memoir Canned: How I Lost Ten Jobs in Ten Years and Learned to Love Unemployment, has collaborated with his writer sister on this disappointing hard-boiled mystery, an indictment of fracking. The 200,000-sq.-mi. Bakken oil field in the upper Midwest has brought prosperity to the region since it went into production in 2000. The oil boom has also resulted in a huge increase in the drug trade, human trafficking, and greed in all its ugly manifestations. PI Alice, a former journalist, travels from her home in New York City to Whitehurst, S.Dak., in an effort to save Bobby, her ex-boss's husband, from a trumped-up murder charge. Alice connects with a savvy local, Kim, and together they set off on a violent trail leading to a vast conspiracy. Weighed down by wooden characters and unconvincingly facile motivations, this novel oversimplifies a highly complex economic and social phenomenon to the point of unpalatable caricature. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Black Hills." Publishers Weekly, 8 Aug. 2016, p. 46. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA460900368&it=r&asid=60d48d02db53e8259fe8a375df4b7cba. Accessed 10 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A460900368
‘Black Hills’ book review: Unraveling a crime in grimy South Dakota oil town
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"Black Hills" is out now.
"Black Hills" is out now. (thomas & mercer)
BY Amanda Douville
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sunday, October 23, 2016, 10:00 AM
Title
Black Hills
Author:
Franklin and Jennifer Schneider
Brother and sister duo Franklin and Jennifer Schneider take readers into the badlands of South Dakota where a once run-down town has come to life thanks to an oil boom.
Their debut novel “Black Hills” tells the story of Alice Riley, a former New York City reporter turned private eye who heads out west to investigate a potentially wrongful conviction, but ends up unearthing much more.
Alice is taken by surprise when her former boss and friend Rachel Wilcox comes to her apartment desperate for help despite their not talking for years. Her husband Robert has been arrested with the assault of a young woman out in Whitehurst, where he works as a geologist. Convinced of his innocence, Alice travels South Dakota where she quickly realizes she’s in for way more than she bargained for.
Upon arriving, Alice learns that Whitehurst isn’t the quaint Midwest community she envisioned but a grimy, male-dominated town where the few women who live there are retail or sex workers. To make matters worse, nearly everyone is hooked on “devil dust,” a powerful drug believed to be made from fracking fluid.
‘Fractured’ review: Writer haunted by stalker in shock thriller
Alice befriends Kim, a prostitute with a lot of connections to the big players in town who also happens to be Robert’s secret mistress. Together the duo begin to dig into what really happened the night Robert was arrested. But nothing goes unnoticed in Whitehurst, especially a pretty woman like Alice.
“Black Hills” is a fast paced and very entertaining read full of unpredictable twists and turns. The main character, Alice, is sexy, smart and fearless but also carries a lot of baggage from her failed marriage and career as her flaws.
How far will she go to uncover the truth, not only about what happened that night but also what’s really going on in Whitehurst?
Pick up a copy of “Black Hills,” out now from Thomas & Mercer, to see for yourself.
Review: 'Black Hills'
Complex hero proves to be gripping read
By By Rob Cline, correspondent
Oct 23, 2016 at 12:05 am | Print View
At the behest of her former friend and boss, Alice Riley leaves New York City for a small town in South Dakota hoping to clear a man — her former friend’s husband — who has been charged with a violent crime. She no sooner arrives than she discovers a community where fracking and addictions to money, power, sex, and drugs have torn the social fabric.
Brother and sister writing team Franklin Schneider and Jennifer Schneider have collaborated to create “Black Hills,” their debut novel. The authors are Iowa natives who both studied writing as undergraduates at the University of Iowa.
Their gritty noir novel finds Alice and an unlikely new partner — the mistress of the man she’s trying to save — taking on a host of power-hungry, dangerous men. To defang the vipers, they get down in the pit, and the result is a bleak, violent, explicit adventure devoid of sentimentality.
In terms of tone, the book is wholly successful, and Alice convincingly exists on the knife edge separating hero from antihero. The interpersonal dynamics in the book frequently feel rushed, with Alice forming deep alliances and antipathies too quickly. Even her questionable decision-making and poor impulse control can’t fully explain some of her quick loyalties or willingness to make powerful enemies with the slightest provocation.
Nevertheless, “Black Hills” is a solid first entry in what could become a gripping series. Alice Riley isn’t a character readers will like or admire, but she is complex, and that complexity makes her compelling. Readers who aren’t afraid to follow her into the dark will find well-wrought tale in “Black Hills.”
Black Hills
by Franklin Schneider and Jennifer Schneider
Immensely readable, Black Hills delivers on many levels.
Jennifer and Franklin Schneider are the sister-brother team behind this excellent new thriller Black Hills.
The protagonist, Alex Riley, is a streetwise ex-journalist from New York who’s in a small South-Dakota town, a fracking boomtown, a modern-day gold-rush, where capitalism has brought greed, opportunism and exploitation. She’s a tough cookie but in an equally tough place, looking into an assault charge against her former boss’ husband. He’s been accused of beating up a girl, putting her in a coma, and the cops here don’t worry much about justice.
This is gritty stuff, not for the faint of heart. It’s modern noir and Alex fits the tradition of hardboiled investigators more than might first appear. She’s certainly got her own code, and plays by her own rules.
As this book is released, here in the UK we are facing our own prospects of fracking, and the controversial subject has its fors and againsts. For what it’s worth, I think this book joins my side of the debate, which is with the anti-fracking campaigners, but it’s not just fracking that makes this setting ugly, like so many towns the place has a drug problem, and crime pays. That’s not to say the book necessarily has an agenda, other than to deliver an entertaining, thought-provoking thriller.
The ‘friendship’ between Alex and Kim, a local prostitute, engages, especially as it’s played out in a town heavily populated with testosterone. The people know who to fear, who runs the show, but corruption and conspiracy soon reveal themselves.
Alex Riley may well return so be sure to check out her debut, you won’t regret it.
About Schneider and Schneider:
Franklin Schneider studied writing at the University of Iowa. He is the author of the acclaimed memoir Canned: How I Lost Ten Jobs in Ten Years and Learned to Love Unemployment.
Jennifer Schneider lives and works in New York City. She has an MFA from the University of Wyoming. She writes with her brother often; this is their first published project together.