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Morris Baker #2
Sunset Empire
The Korean War rages on in this thrilling alternate history sequel to Beat the Devils : Morris Baker, now a private investigator, must solve a missing persons case in the midst of an endless battle.
December, 1959: The Korean War rages on.
Protesting the bloody conflict, a Korean-American man by the name of William Yang suddenly blows himself up in the middle of a Los Angeles department store just before Christmas, which leads the U.S. government to reopen the internment camps used during World War II. President Joseph McCarthy's America has never been more on edge, paranoid, and above all, dangerous.
Several weeks later, a woman hires Morris Baker, now working as a private investigator, to track down her missing husband — Henry Kissinger — who may have a shadowy connection to Yang's purported terrorist attack. The ensuing investigation for the missing State Department consultant working for Vice President Richard Nixon sends Baker on another thrilling adventure of deceit, intrigue, sex, murder, and conspiracy where the safety of the entire world may hang in the balance.
December, 1959: The Korean War rages on.
Protesting the bloody conflict, a Korean-American man by the name of William Yang suddenly blows himself up in the middle of a Los Angeles department store just before Christmas, which leads the U.S. government to reopen the internment camps used during World War II. President Joseph McCarthy's America has never been more on edge, paranoid, and above all, dangerous.
Several weeks later, a woman hires Morris Baker, now working as a private investigator, to track down her missing husband — Henry Kissinger — who may have a shadowy connection to Yang's purported terrorist attack. The ensuing investigation for the missing State Department consultant working for Vice President Richard Nixon sends Baker on another thrilling adventure of deceit, intrigue, sex, murder, and conspiracy where the safety of the entire world may hang in the balance.
448 pages, Hardcover
Published March 28, 2023
12 people are currently reading
2545 people want to read
About the author
Josh Weiss
3 books48 followersJosh Weiss is an author from South Jersey. Raised in a proud Jewish home, he was instilled with an appreciation for his cultural heritage from a very young age. Today, Josh is utterly fascinated with the convergence of Judaism and popular culture in film, television, comics, literature, and other media. After college, he became a freelance entertainment journalist, writing stories for SYFY WIRE, The Hollywood Reporter, Forbes, and Marvel Entertainment. He currently resides in Philadelphia with his incredible wife, Leora; their adorable Cavapoo, Archie; as well as an extensive collection of graphic T-shirts, movie posters, vinyl records, and a few books, of course.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
February 23, 2023
I was gifted an advance copy from the author who is a friend of 10 years— so my review is not without bias. With that said, this book exceeded my expectations as a noticeable improvement from the first installment which is now clearly the catalyst for an exciting series.
Filled with satisfying twists and misdirections, this is a story where no one can be trusted and anyone can die at any moment.
Set in 1959, the main character, Morris Baker, is a Holocaust survivor turned private-I tasked with solving high stake hate-crimes in a dystopian USA that’s become more akin to Nazi Germany.
The pacing in this novel is more meticulous than in Weiss’s debut, “Beat the Devils.”
Sunset Empire delves right into the action from the very first page and unfolds with revelations that crescendo with a stunning finish. I won’t spoil anything; the last 100 pages were fascinating in all its depravity.
This book and its predecessor definitely won’t be for everyone as it has a particular style that is niche and cartoonishly irreverent. The characters often talk more like comic book characters than people— which you will either delight in its escapism or find outlandishly hyperbolic and crude.
If you like historical thrillers with a dystopian twist and dig a bunch of Yiddish and jewish references this could be your jam. The book prides itself in being Jewish to the max, which is pretty cool for a thriller as there’s nothing else on the market like this that I know of.
This series is also a treasure trove of Easter eggs and pop culture references from decades past. You need to have a pretty strong grasp of history, otherwise a lot of the book’s content won’t make sense. Being that there’s so much going on— and well over 50 characters— this is not always the easiest book to read. Parts of the story get lost in its own minutiae. Things really pick up in the last third and every preceding chapter soon reveals itself to be part of an intricate web of deceit.
The way the story concludes also puts the series into sharper focus and opens all sorts of exciting possibilities for where things can branch out to next.
The level of research put into crafting the historical parallels are all the more impressive considering the writer is only 28.
Josh is a true writer’s writer and makes the most of his narrative voice which had me laughing many times over. In this book the narration is every bit as enthralling as its plot, which is a sign of a writer who loves the craft every bit as much as the concept itself.
The main character is written in the vein of James Bond, Indiana Jones, or Robert Langdon— which means the series can continue on for many more iterations. As a work of social commentary it’s fascinating; and as a source of fiction it’s very entertaining.
I can’t wait to see what Josh writes next, whether in this universe or something new.
Filled with satisfying twists and misdirections, this is a story where no one can be trusted and anyone can die at any moment.
Set in 1959, the main character, Morris Baker, is a Holocaust survivor turned private-I tasked with solving high stake hate-crimes in a dystopian USA that’s become more akin to Nazi Germany.
The pacing in this novel is more meticulous than in Weiss’s debut, “Beat the Devils.”
Sunset Empire delves right into the action from the very first page and unfolds with revelations that crescendo with a stunning finish. I won’t spoil anything; the last 100 pages were fascinating in all its depravity.
This book and its predecessor definitely won’t be for everyone as it has a particular style that is niche and cartoonishly irreverent. The characters often talk more like comic book characters than people— which you will either delight in its escapism or find outlandishly hyperbolic and crude.
If you like historical thrillers with a dystopian twist and dig a bunch of Yiddish and jewish references this could be your jam. The book prides itself in being Jewish to the max, which is pretty cool for a thriller as there’s nothing else on the market like this that I know of.
This series is also a treasure trove of Easter eggs and pop culture references from decades past. You need to have a pretty strong grasp of history, otherwise a lot of the book’s content won’t make sense. Being that there’s so much going on— and well over 50 characters— this is not always the easiest book to read. Parts of the story get lost in its own minutiae. Things really pick up in the last third and every preceding chapter soon reveals itself to be part of an intricate web of deceit.
The way the story concludes also puts the series into sharper focus and opens all sorts of exciting possibilities for where things can branch out to next.
The level of research put into crafting the historical parallels are all the more impressive considering the writer is only 28.
Josh is a true writer’s writer and makes the most of his narrative voice which had me laughing many times over. In this book the narration is every bit as enthralling as its plot, which is a sign of a writer who loves the craft every bit as much as the concept itself.
The main character is written in the vein of James Bond, Indiana Jones, or Robert Langdon— which means the series can continue on for many more iterations. As a work of social commentary it’s fascinating; and as a source of fiction it’s very entertaining.
I can’t wait to see what Josh writes next, whether in this universe or something new.
April 11, 2023
Morris Baker is back, and I'm psyched! I really loved the predecessor to this volume, BEAT THE DEVILS, and its witty noir story-telling as well as its ominous alternate history American setting. SUNSET EMPIRE capitalizes on this with another engaging mystery involving some of history's most illustrious-- and notorious-- figures.
June 15, 2023
Marginally better than the first novel. This one involves another convoluted plot in an alternative-history 1950s America in which Joseph McCarthy is president, the Korean War is ongoing and the country is in the grip of an authoritarian anti-Communist, anti-Semitic government. Featured players in the story are a scheming Richard Nixon, Roy Cohn and Henry Kissinger. The plot drags in places and goes off on unnecessary tangents and side plots that trickle off into nothingness.
The main thing to recommend the book is the imaginative depiction of a different America. The main flaw remains sloppy editing. There are typos and grammatical errors: to name a few, "you and her" as a subject clause, your instead of you're, "plum broke" instead of "plumb". Another unfortunate carry-over from the first book is the author's use of modern-day phrases in 1950s speech: "locked down" for being in a committed relationship, jack s**t as a profanity, "from the off" to mean from the start.
I read this, despite the disappointment of the first Morris Baker novel, because I liked alternative history. And the author has gotten away from the L.A. noir of the first book to a less affected style of fiction. But he is done a serious disservice by the poor editing.
The main thing to recommend the book is the imaginative depiction of a different America. The main flaw remains sloppy editing. There are typos and grammatical errors: to name a few, "you and her" as a subject clause, your instead of you're, "plum broke" instead of "plumb". Another unfortunate carry-over from the first book is the author's use of modern-day phrases in 1950s speech: "locked down" for being in a committed relationship, jack s**t as a profanity, "from the off" to mean from the start.
I read this, despite the disappointment of the first Morris Baker novel, because I liked alternative history. And the author has gotten away from the L.A. noir of the first book to a less affected style of fiction. But he is done a serious disservice by the poor editing.
April 21, 2023
Thank you Grand Central Pub for the complimentary copy of Sunset Empire, Morris Baker #2.
I was super psyched to receive this #bookmail especially after reading book #1, Beat the Devils. Sunset Empire continues the saga of living in a world where House of UN-Americans (HUES) hunt those working to undermine the agenda of President McCarthy in the 1959.
This historical thriller is set in a bizarro world featuring some of history’s most prominent figures from the era, doing mischievous things. Morris Baker, a Private Investigator now, is still reeling from his fame after uncovering a sinister plot in book #1. Baker just can’t seem to catch a break, as he soon finds himself again surrounded by murder and mayhem on the streets of LA. The epilogue leads me to believe another book is in the works featuring the badassery of my new favorite Detective.
This series prides itself on its Jewish and Yiddish references, especially Baker’s struggle to reconcile his faith after surviving a concentration camp as a child. I look forward to future work under this authors pen.
I was super psyched to receive this #bookmail especially after reading book #1, Beat the Devils. Sunset Empire continues the saga of living in a world where House of UN-Americans (HUES) hunt those working to undermine the agenda of President McCarthy in the 1959.
This historical thriller is set in a bizarro world featuring some of history’s most prominent figures from the era, doing mischievous things. Morris Baker, a Private Investigator now, is still reeling from his fame after uncovering a sinister plot in book #1. Baker just can’t seem to catch a break, as he soon finds himself again surrounded by murder and mayhem on the streets of LA. The epilogue leads me to believe another book is in the works featuring the badassery of my new favorite Detective.
This series prides itself on its Jewish and Yiddish references, especially Baker’s struggle to reconcile his faith after surviving a concentration camp as a child. I look forward to future work under this authors pen.
June 29, 2023
A new subgenre of detective fiction features alternative versions of our world. For example, in “Sunset Empire: A Morris Baker Novel” by Josh Weiss (Grand Central), while World War II and the Holocaust did take place, Senator Joseph McCarthy, rather than Dwight D. Eisenhower, was elected the 34th president of the United State. The result is agents (known as Hueys) from McCarthy’s Un-American Activities Committee Office act as their own private police force, discriminating against Asians, Jews and anyone else they suspect of supporting the communist cause. The U.S. is also fighting a futile war in Korea, and public opinion about Koreans changes when a member of the American Korean community sets off a bomb in a department store.
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/past...
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/past...
November 21, 2023
This is far from a perfect book. In fact it's less than believable which is not my reaction to the previous book. I can't help but wonder if the author has been seriously wounded by the antisemitism he's seeing everywhere. Nevertheless, I really liked it.
Morris Baker is going off the rails in this book. He's been asked to find a Chinese gangster and he's annoyed that women in his congregation at his schul haven't asked him to find their missing husbands.
This is an alternate realtity book and the alternate reality really sucks. Joseph McCarthy is the President. There are camps for non desirables like Jews, Koreans and more. There is a lot going on here and I don't want to give the plot away. Suffice it to say it's not quite as good as the first book, but it's a good one and I'm looking forward to Morris Baker's return.
Morris Baker is going off the rails in this book. He's been asked to find a Chinese gangster and he's annoyed that women in his congregation at his schul haven't asked him to find their missing husbands.
This is an alternate realtity book and the alternate reality really sucks. Joseph McCarthy is the President. There are camps for non desirables like Jews, Koreans and more. There is a lot going on here and I don't want to give the plot away. Suffice it to say it's not quite as good as the first book, but it's a good one and I'm looking forward to Morris Baker's return.
May 10, 2023
Imagine if you will, a visit into a parallel universe where familiar historical characters take on alternate lives resulting in a history quite different than the U.S.A of today. For 36 days from December 25, 1959 - February 1, 1960, Morris Baker, former cop and current alcoholic private investigator, is hired to find multiple missing people that are fantastically intertwined in a tale that reaches the highest levels of government. Could this happen in reality, or did this happen (if you switch various nouns throughout the story)? I applaud the creativity but overloaded on the melding of stereotypes and attitudes of that era. Definitely a fun read but devoid of any characters to love.
May 12, 2023
A compelling follow up to the adventures of Detective Morris Baker in Beat The Devils. Early in the novel it was difficult to root for an unlikable protagonist but as the story unfolded I came to understand and empathize with Morris. He is a flawed anti-hero but there is finally hope for his redemption.
As in his debut novel, Josh Weiss weaves an intricate and interesting cast of characters as he explores a frightening version of the McCarthy era in this alternate history novel. Every twist and turn took me in a different direction and kept me highly entertained. I am looking forward to Baker's next adventure.
As in his debut novel, Josh Weiss weaves an intricate and interesting cast of characters as he explores a frightening version of the McCarthy era in this alternate history novel. Every twist and turn took me in a different direction and kept me highly entertained. I am looking forward to Baker's next adventure.
May 13, 2023
I read both Josh Weiss books together which helped keep reality at bay! The gruesomeness of what people endured in the concentration camps at the hands of the Nazi’s is very much at the front and center of what the author has to say along with the fact that it’s not unimaginable that it could possibly happen again if we are not mindful. The author once again takes liberty with names of people that did and still do exist and some of the situations that he describes did indeed happen. Once again it will be up to the reader to separate fact from fiction.
May 26, 2023
Alternate history if Joseph McCarthy had been elected president with Nixon his vice president. Fun use of historical figures (doing alternate things that are consistent with their real selves), written into characters throughout the story. Fun to look up the actual people and judge for yourself if this is how they would have behaved in this alternate history. Action-packed but it became a bit much after a while. Murders and kidnappings and concentration camps and antisemitism galore. Would have given it 3.5 stars if I could have.
February 14, 2023
This novel has a striking premise, but I had to give up about 30% in. The speculative fiction is creative and sharp, but it's the main character, Morris Baker, who knocks the book off the rails. He's drunk, stoned, angry, traumatized to the soul and so unpleasant it's hard to stick with him or care about what he discovers.
This was an opportunity missed with this one. Readers of Josh Weiss's earlier book may get with this one. I will keep an eye out for what he comes up with next.
This was an opportunity missed with this one. Readers of Josh Weiss's earlier book may get with this one. I will keep an eye out for what he comes up with next.
March 6, 2024
I think this was better than the first, and took the world and expanded it a little. Which i think turned out well. The storyline was interesting, but still a little confusing. I think too much was going on at times and that caused the storyline to get a little off track. Also a lot of perfect “ah ha” moments that I thought made the story be a little unrealistic at times
April 13, 2023
Simply put although I enjoyed the first book in this series this one turned me off. It’s premise made me uncomfortable while making me think the author really wanted to write it about the history unfolding today.
June 19, 2023
Weiss does a great job of intertwining historical figures into one hell of a fictional thrill ride! Josh Weiss
January 17, 2024
Sunset Empire is an improvement from Wiess’ debut novel, though both fun reads. I won’t pretend this is the next great American novel, but it kept me on my toes and managed to be more realistic (ie still not very realistic, but it’s not meant to be) and nuanced than Beat the Devils.
May 5, 2023
Thanks for the free copy.
May 11, 2023
Very good book and a must read for anyone who has read the first book.
May 12, 2023
Thank you to Grand Central Pub for the free copy.
July 27, 2023
Great mystery
January 6, 2024
Loved the idea but the dialogue and some of the prose seemed really cringey and over the top.
January 12, 2024
A truly delightful series. I can’t wait for the next one.
August 4, 2025
Audiobook. Good mystery. Alternate reality historical fiction. Ominous reflection of Trump administration
September 1, 2025
Plot is SO good but just can’t stand how it’s written, can’t believe I’m saying this but I might finish the series at this point
July 18, 2023
Thank you for sending a free copy through goodreads giveaways.
The story started out pretty interesting. However, it has some scenes and dialogues I thought were pretty unrealistic (even though it's fiction). There is a lot of conversation throughout the book, but it felt like several of the characters were 'talking' more or less in the same way. I was pretty done with it by the end. Not something for me.
The story started out pretty interesting. However, it has some scenes and dialogues I thought were pretty unrealistic (even though it's fiction). There is a lot of conversation throughout the book, but it felt like several of the characters were 'talking' more or less in the same way. I was pretty done with it by the end. Not something for me.
January 12, 2025
Honestly, this one was a slog compared to the first book. It took basically the same trope of a conspiracy with a bunch of moving parts that all conveniently come together at the end and get tied up into a neat little bow where everything was actually related. I enjoyed the first one more personally.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews