Items related to God is a bullet
The feral wasteland of the southern California desert and the badlands of Mexico: these are the settings for Boston Teran's searing debut novel--a dark, wrenching thriller about personal conviction, retribution, and survival.
Fall 1970. In a remote playa a twelve-year-old boy stumbles upon a hideous scene in a dust-strewn trailer: the savage murder of a woman that will remain unsolved for twenty-five years.
Christmas week, 1995. A fourteen-year-old girl is kidnapped by a bloodthirsty satanic cult that calls itself the Left-Handed Path. The leader, Cyrus, considers murder the "ultimate freedom, ultimate joy . . . ultimate service." His "tribe" is a group of drug-fueled young psychopaths honing their skills under the tutelage of a master. Helter Skelter. And then some.
Bob Hightower, the girl's father, is a cop, suddenly more desperate than he ever imagined possible. There are no clues to his daughter's whereabouts, only a scene of unfathomable carnage--the mutilated corpses of her mother and stepfather--left behind by the kidnappers. His only hope is a fierce ex-cult member named Case Hardin, a woman tempered to an extraordinary strength by what she's endured, who's just getting off the junkie trail in a halfway house in Hollywood. Bob has absolutely no reason, and every need, to trust her.
Case suspects that the killings, committed within fifty miles of each other and separated by a quarter of
a century, are part of a byzantine nightmare she knows too well, a nightmare that has now engulfed Bob's daughter. Their quest--he for his child, she to exorcise her demons--becomes a primal hunt-and-chase through a savage subculture of drugs and ritualistic violence ("the black land of plenty") that takes them inexorably toward the limits of physical and psychological torment and trauma.
God Is a Bullet is an indelible story of people who must discover what it means to surrender oneself
completely--to drugs, or power, or faith, or love--and, when necessary, what it takes to come back. It is
a stunning debut.
Fall 1970. In a remote playa a twelve-year-old boy stumbles upon a hideous scene in a dust-strewn trailer: the savage murder of a woman that will remain unsolved for twenty-five years.
Christmas week, 1995. A fourteen-year-old girl is kidnapped by a bloodthirsty satanic cult that calls itself the Left-Handed Path. The leader, Cyrus, considers murder the "ultimate freedom, ultimate joy . . . ultimate service." His "tribe" is a group of drug-fueled young psychopaths honing their skills under the tutelage of a master. Helter Skelter. And then some.
Bob Hightower, the girl's father, is a cop, suddenly more desperate than he ever imagined possible. There are no clues to his daughter's whereabouts, only a scene of unfathomable carnage--the mutilated corpses of her mother and stepfather--left behind by the kidnappers. His only hope is a fierce ex-cult member named Case Hardin, a woman tempered to an extraordinary strength by what she's endured, who's just getting off the junkie trail in a halfway house in Hollywood. Bob has absolutely no reason, and every need, to trust her.
Case suspects that the killings, committed within fifty miles of each other and separated by a quarter of
a century, are part of a byzantine nightmare she knows too well, a nightmare that has now engulfed Bob's daughter. Their quest--he for his child, she to exorcise her demons--becomes a primal hunt-and-chase through a savage subculture of drugs and ritualistic violence ("the black land of plenty") that takes them inexorably toward the limits of physical and psychological torment and trauma.
God Is a Bullet is an indelible story of people who must discover what it means to surrender oneself
completely--to drugs, or power, or faith, or love--and, when necessary, what it takes to come back. It is
a stunning debut.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
Opening with the brutal murder of a woman in 1970 Boston, Teran's God Is A Bullet then jumps forward 25 years to another savage killing. Local cop Bob Hightower discovers his ex-wife and her new husband ritually massacred and his daughter abducted. Setting out to find her, Hightower's only clue is a card pinned to the dead man's chest--"the Judgement...the twentieth enigma of the Tarot"--and his only help an ex-junkie and ex-cult member, Case Hardin, who recognises the trademarks of the sinister Left-Handed Path and its leader Cyrus. Knowing from personal experience the likely fate of Hightower's daughter, she joins Hightower in a desperate search for the missing girl, and the slow uncovering of the connection between the two murders reveals a web of deceit and corruption that extends deep into the heart of small-town America.
Review:
Teran's book manages to combine a sure sense of the dynamics of the thriller genre with a convincing examination of the darker legacies of the sixties. Charles Manson and the Tate-LaBianca murders are obvious reference points for the Left-Handed Path and its conjunction of satanic obsession, drugs, and philosophies of amorality, and Cyrus is a frightening articulation of the dark, negative energies of that decade's fallout:
It was there, in that trailer...that [Cyrus] found the true architect of the modern world...Where he found the only son of man--and he wasn't some jerk-off named Jesus. He was the architect who allowed for the zero-sum game with all its depravities. Who found beauty in blood, a christening through ultimate chaos. Who understood it was better to reign in some perilous extreme than to serve a life sentence of propriety out of fear.A vertigo-inducing descent into the diseased underbelly of American culture, Boston Teran's first novel is a powerful, accomplished thriller. The author's evocation of a subculture of evil and depravity is disturbingly plausible in its exploration of cult activity, and of the mindsets of those for whom ethics and conventional morality are just a sham--and normal people just "sheep" to be slaughtered. --Burhan Tufail
"A shotgun thriller with the cocksure timing of a professional hit."
-The New York Times Book Review
"[A] BRILLIANTLY PACED, SUSPENSE-PACKED . . . RICHLY IMAGINED THRILLER . . . It's hard not to admire God Is a Bullet. . . . It's even harder to put the book down."
-The Washington Post Book World
"SMART AND STYLISH . . . A COMPULSIVE READ . . . Within this taut, obsessive narrative, Teran also delivers finely honed character[s]."
-San Francisco Chronicle
"ASTOUNDING . . . AN EXTRAORDINARY DEBUT THRILLER- SWIFT, RAW, AND GENUINELY SCARY."
-The Baltimore Sun
-The New York Times Book Review
"[A] BRILLIANTLY PACED, SUSPENSE-PACKED . . . RICHLY IMAGINED THRILLER . . . It's hard not to admire God Is a Bullet. . . . It's even harder to put the book down."
-The Washington Post Book World
"SMART AND STYLISH . . . A COMPULSIVE READ . . . Within this taut, obsessive narrative, Teran also delivers finely honed character[s]."
-San Francisco Chronicle
"ASTOUNDING . . . AN EXTRAORDINARY DEBUT THRILLER- SWIFT, RAW, AND GENUINELY SCARY."
-The Baltimore Sun
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherJ'ai lu
- Publication date2008
- ISBN 10 2290325171
- ISBN 13 9782290325179
- BindingMass Market Paperback
- Rating
(No Available Copies)
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