Former NFL player Andre Hardy’s debut, featuring a young man who has risen from the rarely seen dark side of San Diego to the upper echelons of the city’s elite, serving as the fixer to a corrupt kingmaker who now wants to get out and focus on his family, but first he’s got to survive one last job. A potent and atmospheric new vision of the hard-boiled detective and noir genres.
PLAYING COLTRANE
by Andre Hardy
Grand Central, September 2026
(via Writers House)
Like the complex, morally ambiguous protagonists written by Hammett, Chandler, Macdonald, Cain and their many descendants, Coltrane Davis is at once a knight and a hustler. He has risen to wealth and success, graduating from San Diego’s back alleys to the halls of power through his partnership with Saul Sollman, a crooked kingmaker among the city’s elite. Running multimillion dollar scams with Saul, he has been Saul’s fixer, but now he wants out of the hustle so that he can focus on his teenage daughter’s burgeoning tennis career and finally be the dad he has always wanted to be. But when the San Diego Chargers’ star running back disappears one evening before a big game, Coltrane is drawn into an investigation of what happened by Saul and his protégé, the player’s agent; at the same time, Coltrane’s daughter’s closest friend disappears into San Diego’s underworld of drugs and prostitution, and Coltrane is haunted by his failure to save her from San Diego’s sex industry. Torn by the unreconcilable demands of the life he can’t seem to quit, Coltrane brings himself and his loved ones to the brink of destruction in his quest to free himself once and for all of Saul’s control.
PLAYING COLTRANE is brimming with gorgeous writing about place, music, and the hard-fought struggle for personal growth against legacies of violence and neglect.
Andre Hardy is a former NFL running back and Antioch University MFA graduate whose essays and short fiction have appeared in journals and anthologies. His extraordinary journey from professional athlete to Big Five-published novelist infuses his storytelling with grit, rhythm, and authenticity. With this novel, he establishes himself as a breakout voice in contemporary crime fiction, speaking to identity, resilience, and justice with global resonance.


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