The Bay of Sorrows (1994)
Dold makes all this read like nobody has ever written it before. A ragged, raw poetry keeps these pages turning. Anyone expecting just another mystery from Bay of Sorrows will get the same surprise.
The Washington Post Book World
A literary work of considerable merit, a work that leaves a lasting impression and absorbs the reader fully.
The Kansas City Star
Tom Poole is a fine character, slouching clear-eyed into evil knowing that it’s going to hurt.
George V. Higgins Author of The Friends of Eddie Coyle
The World Beat (1995)
In prose that exhibits great descriptive force, the novel raises difficult moral questions of life and death significance, dramatically framed by the novel’s harsh and unforgiving background.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
The writing is superb and supple in appealing ways.
Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter’s Bone
Dold’s written an unusual story that’s dark, threatening, full of unrelenting dread, sordid detail and is mesmerizing…Dold is superbly skilled at bringing his characters and settings to life.
Booklist
The World Beat is beautiful, sad, and fascinating, much like the Africa Dold so artfully describes.
The Orlando Sentinel
Schedule Two (1996)
Gaylord Dold is one of those restless writers who keep the genre from going stale. Merciless studies of human nature in the raw.
Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
To me it seems in a league with Dog Soldiers…What makes Schedule Two a terrific novel is Gaylord Dold’s singular prose and lacerating insights. He draws characters of a variety of backgrounds and draws them beautifully, with depth and grace, and it is beguiling to watch them spin, caught as they are in the pitiless web of the tale he tells. Simply masterful.
Daniel Woodrell, author of Give us a Kiss and Winter’s Bone
The seamless splicing and fast-moving plot with some very limber prose result in another memorable crime work.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
An intricate plot full of double crosses, counterfeit money, and a slam-bang conclusion…one of the best crime novels of the year.
Booklist (starred review)
Luminous characters and prose of spare and near-hallucinatory grace make Schedule Two the best mystery of 1996.
The Portland Oregonian
The Devil to Pay (1999)
The suspense of this cleverly plotted thriller is derived from the old Hitchcockian device of letting the audience—but not the hero—in on the danger….a great thriller.
Booklist (starred review)
Dold’s lyrical and stylized prose is of a quality rarely encountered in any genre. The bloody end in misty San Francisco testifies to Dold’s skills as a perfect scene-setter and villain’s portraitist—evolutionary advantages that any writer of suspense would love to have.
Publishers Weekly
Samedi’s Knapsack (2001)
The gritty dialogue, menace-filled Haitian atmosphere, and exciting double conclusion are first rate, typical of this underappreciated, long-running series.
Booklist
The ninth installment in this respected series finds peripatetic ballplayer-turned PI Roberts in turbulent post-Duvalier Haiti in an absorbing and exotic mix of murder and vodun, or Haitian voodoo. The squalor and poverty prevalent throughout the island are memorably evoked.
Publishers Weekly
The new entry in Gaylord Dold’s long running Mitch Roberts private eye series has the subtlety of Graham Green and the sinew of John D. MacDonald, with a dash of Lawrence Durrell’s fever dreams tossed in. Creepy ambiguity, tropical heat, and polished writing combine to make this a memorable mystery novel.
Vince Kohler The Portland Oregonian
Six White Horses (2002)
Six White Horses is the most basic of stories—a good man in a corrupt world—and Dold’s telling of it is, within the boundaries of noir, just about perfect. In a world of bloated bestsellers, it is always a pleasure to happen upon a writer who understands that less is more.
Patrick Anderson The Washington Post Book World.
The tension runs so thick you’ll be able to cut it with a switchblade…Desperate characters, seedy locales, and a satisfying ending all contribute to the appeal of this neo-noir thriller by veteran suspense author Dold. Violence, while not gratuitous, is very much a presence throughout the book.
Booklist