The Caretaker of Lorne Field

Yeah, I know. Pariah's hasn't been out that long, Killer is coming soon (May) and The Caretaker of Lorne Field won't be out until July, but I thought I'd let people know a little bit what this one's about. It's not crime, not exactly, anyway. So what is it? Well, here's what my publisher (Overlook Press) has put on Amazon:

Review

"If Stephen King had a true Noir calling and Peter Straub added contemporary horror... and Dean Koontz threw in his fine depiction of ordinary life on the edge of the unknown... then bring the specter of James M. Cain to write the narrative, you'd come close to describing the whole effect of this stunning slice for the zeitgeist wondrous novel and the writing is... pure dark bliss."-Ken Bruen, author of London Boulevard

"The Caretaker of Lorne Field is a magnificent novel, with truly believable characters and suspense that keeps building to an explosive climax. There it is, plain and simple." -Seymour Shubin, Edgar Award finalist, author of Anyone's My Name

Product Description

Dave Zeltserman's last novel was named by NPR as one of the top five crime and mystery novels of 2008 and one of The Washington Post's best books of the year. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, said his "breakthrough third crime novel deserves comparison with the best of James Ellroy." And Crimetime calls him a name to watch." Now, Zeltserman has written the book his fans have been waiting for-a classic unlike anything you've ever read.

Jack Durkin is the ninth generation of Durkins who have weeded Lorne Field for nearly 300 years. Though he and his wife Lydia are miserable and would like nothing more than to leave, Jack must wait until his son has come of age to tend the field on his own. It's an important job, though no one else seems to realize it. For, if the field is left untended, a horrific monster called an Aukowie will grow-a monster capable of taking over the entirety of America in just two weeks. Or so it is said. . .

Overlook has recently sent this out to a lot of people for blurbs, and it's going to be interesting to see who responds. When Paul Tremblay and I were at our event a couple of weeks ago at the Mysterious Bookshop, my Overlook publicist dropped by with ARCs fresh off the press, at which time I got my ARC and also got one for Paul. This is what Paul has to say about Caretaker after giving it a read:

"The Caretaker of Lorne Field is a wonderfully weird, gritty, and pitch-dark legend, perfect for New England. Weaved in the compulsively readable narrative is a heavy dose of our current society's meanness, unease, and ambiguity: kind of a nightmare-noir zeitgeist. The thing of it is, the reader is never safe in Dave Zeltserman's hands. I love that. You should too."

More later as Caretaker comes closer to its release date.