Created by Laird Barron
Bookish ISAIAH COLERIDGE always fantasized about being a Chandleresque kinda private eye, but when you’re a big, hulking, half-Maori hunk, seemingly boiling over with potential violence, it ain’t that easy. And working as an enforcer for the Alaskan mob didn’t seem to be the right way to get there. But at least he’s making a living, right?
And then he has a “misunderstanding” of sorts with a local made man, and barely escapes with his life.
He flees to New York’s Hudson Valley where he finds new employment as a farmhand, hoping to keep a low profile, but that’s endangered when he indulges his P.I. wet dreams and volunteers to help find a local girl who’s disappeared, in Blood Standard (2018), an over-boiled but stylish and very promising crime fiction debut by horror writer Laird Barron.
The follow-up, Black Mountain (2019), finds Isaiah firmly ensconced in the Hudson Valley, now officially a private eye, but still, apparently, feeling the pull of the Mob.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laird Barron was born in Alaska, where he raised huskies and worked in the construction and fishing industries for much of his youth, but currently lives in Kingston, New York.
UNDER OATH
- “Rendered in icy strokes of prose, Laird Barron’s Blood Standard is a remarkably self-assured crime novel—at once explosive and intimate, with a tightly wound plot and wonderfully realized characters. And then there’s Barron’s hero, Isaiah Coleridge. He’s got a dead dog named Achilles and bits of Beowulf on his breath and in his teeth. Needless to say, there’s not too many like him.”
— Michael Harvey - “Barron’s second novel featuring retired mob strongman Isaiah Coleridge is as nasty as a cornered pit viper—and its plot is about as sinuous. . . . Barron peppers the text with literary references and philosophical reflections that provide rich counterpoint to the violent bashing and bloodletting. Fans of hardboiled crime fiction and wiseguy vernacular will be well satisfied.”
— Publishers Weekly - “More than a book, (Worse Angels) is a Molotov cocktail in which horror is gasoline, crime is the bottle and the handkerchief, and Barron’s prose is the flame. Handle it carefully.”
— Gabino Iglesias (June 2020, Criminal Element)
NOVELS
- Blood Standard (2018) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Black Mountain (2019) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Worse Angels (2020) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- The Wind Began to Howl (2023)| Buy this book | Kindle it!
Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
