Butcher's Road

by Lee Thomas

Overview

1932: Fortune and celebrity are years behind Butch Cardinal. Once a world-class wrestler, Cardinal now serves as hired muscle for a second-rate Chicago mobster. While collecting a parcel from a gangland lowlife, Cardinal witnesses the man's murder. Though wounded, he escapes the killers and flees into the night carrying the package. In it is a necklace with a metal pendant. Bent and scratched, the thing looks like a piece of junk, but the trinket is the reason a man died. It's the reason a lot of people will die. Finding shelter with another shamed wrestler in New Orleans, Cardinal embarks on search for answers that will reveal a world of metallic charms and weapons, all forged with unimaginable powers. Alone and outgunned, Cardinal must stand against the Chicago mobs, a brilliant and insane hitman, the police, and a mysterious order intent on retrieving their relic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590214701
Publisher:	Lethe Press
Publication date:	05/15/2014
Pages:	318
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.71(d)

Editorial Reviews

03/17/2014
Stoker- and Lambda-winner Thomas (The German) creates a heady blend of gangster noir and supernatural horror. Butch Cardinal, washed-up wrestler turned gang enforcer, is caught between the wrath of Chicago’s Italian mob and the Alchemi, a mysterious organization of powerful magicians. After being set up and framed for murder, he flees to New Orleans with a stolen magical relic. There he discovers mystical talents and finds unexpected love with another man. Butch’s imaginatively realized world of gangsters, crooked cops, ruthless killers, and magic users is full of violence and cruelty, and is also intensely masculine; women are bit players at most. Thomas deftly manages a large cast of characters, though the number of narrative threads results in a hectic final act. (May)

Publishers Weekly