Look Out For… … Disintegration by Richard Thomas
“Disintegration takes the reader on a journey through the dark and grubby side of contemporary Chicago.”
In a brilliantly stylish breakthrough thriller for fans of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho and Will Christopher Baer’s Kiss Me, Judas, here is the compelling tale of a man who has lost it all—and is now navigating a crooked, harrowing path to redemption.
Once a suburban husband and father, now the man has lost all sense of time. He retains only a few keepsakes of his former life: a handmade dining room table, an armoire and dresser from the bedroom, and a tape of the last message his wife ever left on their answering machine. These are memories of a man who no longer exists. Booze and an affair with a beautiful woman provide little relief, with the only meaning left in his life comes from his assignments. An envelope slipped under the door of his apartment with the name and address of an unpunished evildoer. The unspoken directive to kill. And every time he does, he marks the occasion with a memento: a tattoo. He has a lot of tattoos.
But into this unchanging existence seep unsettling questions. How much of what he feels and sees can he trust? How much is a lie designed to control him? He will risk his own life—and the lives of everyone around him—to find out.
Why We’re Excited About This Book:
Richard Thomas’s neo-noir novel Disintegration takes the reader on a journey through the dark and grubby side of contemporary Chicago. The first in the Windy City Dark Mystery series, Disintegration tells the story of an unnamed narrator, a hit-man of sorts, whose dead-end life is devoid of meaning save for the jobs he carries out for the mysterious ‘Vlad’. But not everything is as it seems, and he finds out that despite thinking he’s lost everything, there’s always more to lose.
Garnering advance praise from the likes of Irvine Welsh, Laird Barron and Chuck Wendig, Disintegration looks set to be a big hit for Thomas. And a well-deserved one too, given the book’s sharp and staccato prose, dark philosophical musing, visceral violence and compulsive plot. Likely to feature in many reader’s favourites of the year, Disintegration is a gritty and compelling masterpiece.
Disintegration is available to release 26th May 2015 from Alibi Press.
Look Out For … Darkest Minds
“It’s no surprise that Darkest Minds has attracted some of the best writers currently at work.”
Darkest Minds, the third anthology from Dark Minds Press, collects twelve stories that embrace the borderlines.
Why We’re Excited About This Book:
Darkest Minds: Stories From The Borderlands, the third anthology from Dark Minds Press, is based around the theme of crossing borders, of slipping over boundaries both physical and metaphorical. Of course, horror fiction has been exploring the hinterlands between life and death, the real and unreal for years; the list of classics dealing with the theme would include The House On The Borderlands, 11.22.63 and The House Next Door–in fact, it’s hard to think of many horror stories that don’t fit, at least obliquely.
Given such a rich heritage to draw on, it’s no surprise that Darkest Minds has attracted some of the best writers currently at work, including Ralph Robert Moore, Tracy Fahey, Glen Krisch, Mark West, Gary Fry, Stephen Bacon and Andrew Hook.
Three years in the making, Darkest Minds is highly recommended to all lovers of a good horror anthology.
Darkest Minds is out now from Dark Minds Press.
JAMES EVERINGTON
