Name of the Stranger

Never get involved with a patient ... Especially the one threatening your life ...

Robert Sutherland seemed harmless enough ... then Dr. Mason Stevens announced he was closing his practice. A thrifty mind and an inadvertent best-seller gave him the means to travel. Soon Dr. Stevens is at peace half-way around the world ... until Sutherland appears.

Was it just coincidence the former patient also left San Francisco, and settled in Morocco? Growing hostility convinces Stevens it’s time to develop a healthy case of paranoia -- because he never knows when Sutherland might decide to bump into him.

Name of the Stranger is a contemporary thriller, written in the spirit of Patricia Highsmith, about a mental patient who demands "closure" -- but the hapless psychologist won't close this case without a fight.

Johnny Strike is an American writer, mostly known as songwriter, guitarist and singer for the proto-punk band Crime based in San Francisco. Headpress published Strike's first novel in 2004, Ports of Hell, with a blurb by William S. Burroughs. Strike also interviewed Paul Bowles, Mohamed Choukri, Herbert Huncke and traveled, with extended stays in Morocco, Mexico, and Thailand, where he set his fiction. His writing has appeared in Ambit magazine, Headpress Journal, and Pulp Adventures. In 2008, Rudos and Rubes published his short story collection, A Loud Humming Sound Came From Above, illustrated by Richard Sala. His new ebook, The Exploding Memoir, is available now.