An ex-NFL stars action-packed new book takes aim at San Diegos dark side

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Set us as preferred Would-be writers are always advised to “write what you know.” But when what you know is informed by a lifetime of living life adjacent to a city’s roughest gangs, of promising starts and heartbreaking stops, crushing losses and amazing recoveries, what comes out on the page could be a mess.Or a masterpiece.On the Shelf Tear the City Down By Andre Hardy Grand Central Publishing: 432 pages, $30If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.Count “Tear the City Down,” former NFL running back Andre Hardy’s debut, out Sept.

1, in the latter category.It kicks off with an enticing sports-driven setup: Coltrane Davis, an about-to-retire bag man and fixer for a wealthy San Diego macher, is persuaded by Saul Sollman, his boss, and Sollman’s pseudo-son Dylan Banks, a sports agent, to take one last assignment — find Anthony Riddell, a missing L.A.

Chargers All-Pro running back being extorted over a scandalous sex photo.But like a play-action sneak, while readers are distracted by Coltrane’s action-packed investigation into the salacious case, Hardy throws into the mix the emotional journey of a hustler trying to balance the karmic scales of his former wrongs.

Violence and love, karma and greed square off while exposing San Diego’s underbelly, where gang life, sex clubs and human trafficking are strange bedfellows with the city’s business and political elite.At the center of the maelstrom is Coltrane — who describes himself as “cast-iron black, six foot three and 235 pounds of mostly muscle.” Moreover, he’s a chess-playing, gourmet cooking, crime fiction aficionado and jazz lover equally comfortable on the mean streets of East Daygo and in the lush life of La Jolla Farms estates.

Like other great crime fig...