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Deadbeat: A Novel Hardcover – December 3, 2024
Peyton Collard was a good man once, but his life changed after a horrific car accident. Divorced, drunk, and severely damaged, Peyton is offered a life-changing sum of money to kill an evil man. But as he goes on a vigilante journey that leaves a trail of bodies across California, Peyton wonders about the identity of his anonymous patron. Soon, his questions become an obsession, and he embarks on a tense and potentially deadly investigation to discover the truth about the murders he’s committed.
- Print length368 pages
- SpracheEnglisch
- PublisherAtria Books
- Publication dateDecember 3, 2024
- Dimensions6 x 0.91 x 9 inches
- ISBN-101668031523
- ISBN-13978-1668031520
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Product details
- Publisher : Atria Books (December 3, 2024)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 368 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1668031523
- ISBN-13 : 978-1668031520
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.91 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,729,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #21,518 in Murder Thrillers
- #63,240 in Suspense Thrillers
- #73,442 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
![Guy N. Smith](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/amzn-author-media-prod/p13oo3d01rrb4sarr446cc3o2r._SY600_.jpg)
I had my first story published in a local newspaper at the age of 12, followed by 55 more before I was 17. It was a good start to a writing career and I owe much of it to my mother (historical novelist E.M. Weale) who gave me every encouragement. My father, though, was insistent that I followed family tradition and went into banking.
Hence it was twenty years later before I became a full-time author and I had some catching up to do. The 1970's were a boom time for pulp fiction and I made my debut with 'Werewolf by Moonlight' (NEL 1974). It was 'Night of the Crabs', though, which really established me as a writer, virtually overnight in that memorable record, hot summer of 1976. This title was the 'No.1 beach read'. It saw numerous reprints, spawned 5 sequels along with several short stories, as well as a movie.
'Night of the Crabs' enabled me to go full-time. At the time with my wife, Jean, and our four children we were living a reasonably conventional life in Tamworth, Staffordshire. It was time to move on though, and in 1977 we moved to our present home in a remote part of the Shropshire/Welsh border hills.
I was no stranger to country life though, and the further away we were from town and traffic the better. For many years I had been writing for the 'Shooting Times' and several other sporting publications. Then in 1999 I accepted the post of Gun Editor of 'The Countryman's Weekly'. This involved 4-5 articles per week and I relished the challenge.
By this time pulp fiction was virtually out of fashion so diversification suited me, yet my readership has remained faithful to me and technology has made it all possible again with e-books. Thus my backlist is steadily returning to electronic print along with some new books. It is an exciting time.
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“[He] comes at us with both hands, not willing to simply engage our attention: he seizes us by the lapels and begins to scream in our faces. It is not a tremendously artistic method of attack, and no one is ever going to compare him to Doris Lessing or V. S. Naipaul…but it works.”
Smith indeed comes at readers with both hands in Deadbeat, a short novel about the devil, rock and roll, and apocalypse, both global and personal; inside you can find sex, violence, gangs, riots, satanic rituals, the Antichrist, and even a woman being devoured by pigs. It tells the story of sixteen year old Eddie Bannon, and the strange odyssey the troubled youth embarks on after listening to an album called Deadbeat, from a group called The Necromancers, for the first time. There’s something compelling about the music, something that literally gets inside his head and tells him to lash out at everything he holds dear. Unfortunately, it has that effect on almost everyone under thirty who listens to it, inciting incredible violence and disrupting everyday life across the globe. The music, it seems, was composed by the Dark One himself, designed to bring about Armageddon.
As mentioned above, subtlety is not Smith’s strong suit. The book has a manic energy, however, which keeps your attention, as you can’t wait to see what the author throws at you next. It’s not "literary," and it’s not George R. R. Martin’s The Armageddon Rag, by any means, but it is readable, perfect for a plane trip or a lazy day at the beach. In other words, “It works.”