Ghost Dance : Anthony Neil Smith
Ghost Dance : The Complete Slow Bear Collection
Available in eBook, Paperback, Hardback 426pp
Hard luck. Hard liquor. Hard truths.
Meet Micah ‘Slow Bear’ Cross — one-armed, half-sober, and wholly fed up. Once a rez cop on the Fort Berthold Reservation, now he’s a broken-down hustler with a knack for trouble, a weakness for women, and a bad habit of doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.
In Slow Bear, Slower Bear, and Slowest Bear, our reluctant antihero stumbles, bleeds, and curses his way through a world of crooked cops, oil-boom gangsters, and small-town sins that never wash clean. He’s the kind of detective who’ll take your case, drink your beer, and still manage to piss off everyone involved.
Ghost Dance is bruised, brutal, and darkly comic, a binge-read for anyone who likes their noir unfiltered, their heroes damaged, and their endings uncertain
Welcome to the Badlands. Slow Bear’s still dancing.
Praise for the Slow Bear novels…
"Fantastic. Like what would happen if Jack Reacher hit absolute rock bottom, lost an arm, woke up in a dumpster, and just decided, fuck it, I'm going to keep killing bad guys." – James Kestral, author of Five Decembers (winner of 2022 Edgar Award for Best Novel)
“In Slower Bear, Anthony Neil Smith’s prose is a hammer; sometimes pounding, sometimes clawing out flesh, but always bludgeoning or yanking the reader through the bloody and break-neck story of lost soul-asshole Micah Cross’ search for redemption. Or maybe it’s just the search for a glass of pulpy orange juice across the counter from a girl with a nice rack, but it’s fast, graphic, obscenely funny, and I couldn’t put it down.” – Meagan Lucas, author of the award-winning novel Songbirds and Stray Dogs, and Editor in Chief of Reckon Review
"Dazzles with repellent wit. A sleazy queasy poetic punch from one of the masters of pulp" – Saira Viola, author of Jukebox and Crack, Apple & Pop
“I went into Slower Bear expecting to read a fine noir novel by a gifted author I respect. I got this in spades. But what I didn’t expect was to come away with a renewed belief in the power of new love to push through even the worst of circumstances, as Abeline’s caring for the girls is also a dynamic we see form right before our very eyes. Smith ultimately offers us a side dish with his crime novel: the formation of an unusual family of four. I’ll take that with my shootouts every day of the week and twice on Sunday.” – Sheldon Lee Compton author of Brown Bottle, Alice and the Wendigo, and Dysphoria.
"Anthony Neil Smith mixes dark humor, menace, mayhem and a washed-out, one-armed hero in a noirish tale that never stops to take a breath." - Linwood Barclay, author of No Time for Goodbye and Too Close to Home
"Slow Bear is everything I love about dark fiction and don't see nearly enough of. Anthony Neil Smith writes uncompromisingly dark fiction without sacrificing the humanity or entertainment value of his characters. If you always wondered what Jim Rockford would be if he went full dark, Slow Bear is the book for you." Bryon Quertermous
"Slow Bear is many things: a bull in a china shop; a raging lion; a stubborn mule; a fire-breathing dragon; a wise old bird. a drunken old skunk; and a murderous hyena. What's more, he's the kind of noir anti-hero who'll have you rooting for him all the way, which is good because, the way things are going, he certainly needs someone on his side. Another stunning creation by Anthony Neil Smith." - Nigel Bird