The Serialist

by David Gordon

Overview

A DARK AND STYLISH PAGE-TURNER FROM A BOLD NEW VOICE IN FICTION

Harry Bloch is a struggling writer who pumps out pulpy serial novels—from vampire books to detective stories—under various pseudonyms. But his life begins to imitate his fiction when he agrees to ghostwrite the memoir of Darian Clay, New York City’s infamous Photo Killer. Soon, three young women turn up dead, each one murdered in the Photo Killer’s gruesome signature style, and Harry must play detective in a real-life murder plot as he struggles to avoid becoming the killer’s next victim.

Witty, irreverent, and original, The Serialist is a love letter to books—from poetry to pornography—and proof that truth really can be stranger than fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781441727855
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	03/09/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged
Pages:	7
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 6.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

David Gordon is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Columbia MFA program and also holds a Masters in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia. He has worked as a screenwriter and a magazine editor. He lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

A seedy freelance writer provides the wry narrative voice for Gordon's winning debut, a darkly humorous thriller. New Yorker Harry Bloch, who once had lofty literary ambitions, has spent the past two decades as a hack, mostly as an advice columnist called the Slut Whisperer for Raunchy magazine. Bloch also earns cash by doing homework for affluent private school students, a side business managed by a precocious teenage girl who was the first pupil he was paid to tutor. His boring life takes an unexpected turn after he receives a letter from death-row inmate Darian Clay (aka the Photo Killer), who, as a fan of the Slut Whisperer, thinks Bloch is right for the job of assisting him on his memoirs. In exchange for Clay revealing where he concealed the heads of his female victims, Bloch must seek out women who have written to Clay and write stories about their having sex with the serial killer. A number of plausible plot twists help shift the story from farce to whodunit. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

A multilayered tale of a writer who's trying to make more than just a buck. He's a man of many faces: T.R.L. Pangstrom, author of the Whoremasters of Zorg sci-fi/porn series; J. Duke Johnson, creator of inner-city private eye Mordechai Jones; and Sibylline Lorindo-Gold, the force behind the Crimson vampire series, beloved of goth bloggers coast to coast. Back home in Queens, though, he's just Harry Bloch, a hack writer who longs for some of the eminence his ex-girlfriend Jane's new husband has achieved as editor of Brooklyn literary journal The Torn Plaid Coat. Just when it looks as if Harry's career has skidded to the brink-he's reduced to forging term papers for brilliant, bored 15-year-old preppie Claire Hall-he gets a letter from serial killer Darian Clay, who knows Harry as Tom (The Slut Whisperer) Stanks from Raunchy magazine. Clay wants someone to ghost his memoirs-a potential gold mine, Claire sagely points out, and his ticket to the world of nonserial literature. So Harry confers with Clay's attorney, Carol Flosky, and next thing you know he's on a train upstate to meet the death-row inmate. But working with mass murderers is never easy, and pretty soon Harry is in deeper peril than his half-vampire heroine Sasha finds in the castle of Count Aram. Not the best-wrought mystery in the world, but a tour de force debut that provides too much fun for readers to carp.

Kirkus Reviews

"A killer debut. . . funny, with a satirical edge, and unlike some literary authors who play with genre, Gordon knows how to write a potboiler." —Los Angeles Times

“Seldom has a serial-killer story been as richly textured and laugh-out-loud funny as this one. Sure to be among the most unusual and appealing of this year’s debut thrillers.”
—Booklist (starred review)

"An irreverent and funny twist on the classic whodunit—the kind of pulp-fiction mystery that made the careers of such writers as Jim Thompson, Raymond Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett." — GQ.com

“Gordon, who lives in New York City, is terrifically talented. . . Not just a good first novel, but an excellent novel, period.” –Winnipeg Free Press

"A tour de force debut." —Kirkus

"The Serialist is a book about many things but above all it's about storytelling — why and how we tell stories to stay not only sane but also alive. David Gordon writes with style, bite, suspense, humor, and heart. Remember his name. The Serialist is great fun to read and the beginning of a noteworthy career."
—David Ebershoff, author of The 19th Wife and The Danish Girl

"David Gordon has gathered up our cultural trash and made of it something magnificent. In the tradition of Bolano, Chandler, and lots of dime novels that most of us pretend to know nothing about, The Serialist makes high art out of serial murders, pornography, soup dumplings and pulp fiction. I adore this book!"
-Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances

"The Serialist is an entertainingly wicked debut. A literary pulp fiction that flays and skewers post-Millennial New York and along the way reinvents the American detective novel. David Gordon has arrived, brash, irreverent and indecently talented."
—Evan Wright, author of Generation Kill

"The Serialist is David Gordon’s debut novel, and an auspicious one it is. . .Terrific
characters, a game (if somewhat reluctant) protagonist and clever dialogue make
The Serialist a really excellent debut just itching for a sequel." —Bookpage

From the Publisher

Failed author Harry Bloch writes a sex-fantasy column called “Slut Whisperer” for a HUSTLER-type magazine and ghostwrites student papers on the side. This darkly comic character offers a well-met challenge for narrator Bronson Pinchot. When Bloch is summoned by serial killer Darien Clay, who is on death row, to write his true confessions, Pinchot’s storytelling ably transitions from the narrative voice of the self-deprecating Jewish author to that of the truly evil man in prison. Other characters who are well portrayed are Clay’s hard-bitten attorney, Bloch’s teenaged business manager for the ghostwriting business, and the stripper sister of one of Clay’s victims, who becomes Bloch’s lover. Gordon’s thriller is interspersed with bizarre voyages into Bloch’s soft-porn vampire and fantasy tales. Pinchot negotiates all these elements with alacrity and humor. D.P.D. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2011 - AudioFile