SALAMANDERS
Pete Murphy
|
Salamanders is a modern noirist thriller of despair and redemption that explores the dark edge of adult violence and its roots in childhood abandonment. They were the Salamander gang, good kids all of them, orphans raised in the 1970s in the El-Yoyo foster home. In the back yard they hunted Salamanders when the rains came. Now in the 2000s, when they’re all grown up and have gone their separate ways, the call goes out: they’re starting to die. One by one. After years hustling on the Philly streets, Oliver’s outgrown the kid’s stuff. It’s time to settle down, get straight. But it’s too late: his past won’t leave him alone. Soon he’ll learn that somebody’s trying to kill him and he won’t know why. It’s a new kind of hide and seek. Nobody plays by the rules anymore: in the end it will almost kill him. Almost. They were good kids, all of them – but one of them was a killer. His name is Pilot and he’s planning a reunion for the Salamander gang. Salamanders author Pete Murphy was a true original: a highly gifted writer steeped in the tradition of Hemingway, Chandler and Elmore Leonard, but with a voice distinctively his own – caustic, subtle, and sometimes explosively understated. A startlingly original modern noirist thriller of despair and redemption that explores the dark edge of adult violence and its roots in childhood abandonment, Salamanders has already attracted praise from PUREFICTION’s ESP winners and AUTHORLINK showcase, which featured Murphy as suspense author of the month. This is a novel and a writer that is crying out to be published properly.
Pete Murphy was - until Hurricane Katrina - based in New Orleans but in 2005 he moved to Texas. He died in March 2011. |
Read the novel (TURNING PAGES version)