Holy Death : Anthony Neil Smith (Fahrenheit Pocket Noir)
Billy Lafitte should’ve died a long time ago.
Hell, plenty of people tried. The cops, the cons, the gangsters, the whole goddamn state of Mississippi. But Lafitte’s a cockroach in human form - flattened a hundred times and still twitching.
Now he’s back on the Gulf Coast with a stolen truck, a heart ready to explode, and a past that’s finally caught up with him. Everyone wants a piece of him, the mobsters, the cops, the ghosts he left buried in the mud. And Lafitte? He just wants one last shot at redemption… or revenge… or whatever passes for salvation when you’re too crooked for even God to care.
Holy Death is Anthony Neil Smith at full burn, filthy, funny, furious noir where every page smells like sweat & bad decisions. This is Southern Crime turned up to eleven: a chase story, a revenge story, a “your-life-is-a-garbage-fire-and-we-love-you-for-it” story.
If you like your noir messy, blistering, and absolutely unhinged, welcome home.
Praise for Anthony Neil Smith
“On my list of the most original voices in crime fiction today, Anthony Neil Smith easily makes it into the top five. YELLOW MEDICINE is a terrific read, a crime noir bullet-train ride on unsafe tracks.”—Scott Wolven, author of Controlled Burn.
“YELLOW MEDICINE gets its hooks into you from its first turbulent pages. It is the novel's complicated, captivating hero, Deputy Billy Lafitte, who holds you from beginning to end. He’s a liar, a cheat and a pretty bad guy, but so richly rendered that, before you know it, you find yourself following him through the darkest of terrains, and eagerly.”—Megan Abbott, author of the Edgar-nominated Queenpin
“YELLOW MEDICINE starts with one of the most memorable and engaging anti-heroes in recent memory. Mix in bent cops, a psychobilly band called Elvis Antichrist, meth cookers in the Minnesota sticks, and a truly nasty pack of wannabe jihadists. Add a liberal helping of guns, knives and explosives. You're gonna love it.”—J.D. Rhoades, author of A Good Day in Hell and Safe and Sound.
“Anthony Neil Smith has taken the stark, freezing landscape of rural Minnesota and brought it to life with an injection of Louisiana Hot Sauce in the form of Deputy Billy Lafitte. A violent, bawdy, thrilling, edgy, gut-churning masterpiece.”—Victor Gischler, author of Go Go Girls of the Apocalypse, Pistol Poets, and the Edgar-nominated Gun Monkeys.
“Smith deserves credit for taking a risk by creating a character like Lafitte, whose private code of honor-if any-is far more obscure than an antihero like Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer.”—Publishers Weekly
“Smith has a powerful voice and delivers quite a romp, offering along the way a sort of Tony Hillerman glimpse into a part of the country that is not often the subject of crime fiction.”—Steve Glassman, Booklist
“It’s gonna get bad up in here and it’s gonna get sad and it’s gonna get just plain nasty. Right now, this sits at the top of my ‘Best Thrillers Of The Year.” —Les Edgerton, author of The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping and others
“There are going to be the hardcore crowd who will fucking love it, and there are going to be people who will never buy Smith’s stuff again. I think it’s a tremendous novel, one of those little underground books that people hold onto with both hands.” —Ray Banks, author of the Cal Innes novels and the Farrell & Cobb books
Fahrenheit Pocket Noir
The Baddest Ass is part of our new Fahrenheit Pocket Noir series - you can find out more here...
