It begins on July 4th. A car plows through a parade, and the driver stumbles out into the crowd. Sick, possibly dying, the man’s hands kill anyone he touches within seconds. After watching her loved ones die, now Maeve has the killing touch. She runs to the mountains, tormented and confused, realizing she will never be able to touch anyone ever again.
Ben Walker, an expert in weird occurrences, receives a call from the newly restructured Global Science Research Coalition. His job: Find Maeve and get her to safety. He needs to get to her first—many will kill for her secret—to unravel the mysterious illness.
Maeve, sick and struggling to find a place to hide, begins to hear a strange voice in her head. There’s a yearning … a need … to touch another human, and she can’t fight it off. When Walker finds Maeve, they begin to solve a mystery as old as history itself.
Why we’re excited about this book:
Christopher Golden in one of the best-known names in the speculative fiction genre. Author of novels such as Snowblind, The Ocean Dark, as well as the Peter Octavian series, Golden also works in comics such as Hellboy, Joe Golem, and Baltimore, as well as media ties for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alien, Sons of Anarchy, Angel, and many more. His recent work covers the exploits of Ben Walker, expert in ‘weird shit’ as he calls himself, in the novels Ararat, The Pandora Room. With his latest Ben Walker novel, Golden hits the ground running with a strange bio-weapon and the perfect standalone entry into the world of this globe-trotting weird detective. Mallory O’Meara (The Lady from the Black Lagoon) says: “Red Hands is an absolutely riveting novel. I couldn’t put it down. A thriller filled to the brim with equal parts terror and heart. Only Christopher Golden could weave together compelling characters and a gripping plot like this.”, and Nathan Ballingrud (Wounds) says: “Ben Walker is back in Christopher Golden’s Red Hands, a plague novel with a twist you won’t see coming. This novel is part thriller, part horror, part science fiction—in other words, as immediate and timely as this morning’s paper. Except in Golden’s world, the good guys give as good as they get. And the ride is a hell of a lot more fun.” .
Forthcoming 8 December 2020 from St. Martin’s Press, Red Hands by Christopher Golden is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA