Death Puppet: A Novel - Softcover

Nisbet, Jim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590201973 ISBN 13: 9781590201978

Publisher: The Overlook Press, 2014

Synopsis

She’s lived all but one year of her life in Dip, and not much of what goes on there escapes her eye. But then, not much of what goes on in Dip is worth noticing. That is, until a traveling salesman named Tucker Harris drifts into town. Mattie cuts out on her steady guy just long enough for this stranger to introduce her to his bizarre brand of safe sex, and after Tucker splits, Mattie figures to go on with her life the same as before. What begins as sassy complicity in a capricious tryst triggers a subtle and vertiginous slide into hell, with no stops for beer or introspection. Mattie suffers the horrible revelation that there will be no savior capable of rescuing her sanity―let alone her life.

About this title

About the Author:

Jim Nisbet is the author of twelve novels and five books of poetry. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times, shortlisted for the Hammett Prize, and published in ten languages. He lives in San Francisco, California.

From Publishers Weekly:

In this somewhat uneven debut, Nesbit attempts to combine the snap of the hardboiled mystery with the introspection of a more consciously literary vein. At the novel's start, Tucker Harris, a Vietnam vet whose diet seems to consist of nothing but bennies and hard booze, is making his moves on the attractive yet solitary Mattie Brooke, the waitress at the Dip Cafe. After a satisfying evening of love-making--Mattie even sacrifices her two fighting fish to the cause--Harris disappears, leaving only a poem by Verlaine, written out on paper towel, and a sock to mark his passing. The next morning, two strangers, Eddie and Scott, appear at the cafe, asking for Mattie's sometime lover Jedidiah Dowd, whose mother's letters Mattie longs to publish. Mattie rides with the two men out to Dowd's farm, where she discovers not only that her friend has been setting up drug distribution networks, but also that Tucker Harris is somehow involved. While the action sequences are competently drawn, the plotting is unimpressive and the characterizations two-dimensional. The best writing occurs when Nesbit describes the little computer-punching devil living inside Harris's head: "He looked almost cute, in a lurid way, Bambi in drag." In the main, however, Nesbit attempts to weave too many threads into too thin a fabric.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Overlook Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1590201973
• ISBN 13: 9781590201978
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224