Washington Post Best Books

Washington Post Best Books of 2008: Small Crimes
Washington Post Best Books of 2009: Pariah

Caretaker of Lorne Field

Overlook Press will be publishing this July, 2010.

Pariah on the Web

Pariah's received a couple of nice recent comments on the Web. According to Vince Keenan, "There’s dark, and then there’s dark", and you can Vince's review of Pariah here. Author Paul Tremblay (whose The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland I've enjoyed immensely) says of Pariah: "Pariah is at turns brutal, violent, and a funny, scathing satire of our celebrity obsessed consumer culture and publishing industry. Really couldn’t put the book down, I poured through it in one day". You can read all of Paul's thoughts on Pariah here.

Nice mention on today's Shelf Awareness

Under Books & Authors they have for Paperbacks:

Pariah by Dave Zeltserman (Serpent's Tail, $14.95, 9781846686436/1846686431). "Dave Zeltserman returns with a tale of the South Boston mob so harrowing it places him alongside contemporary masters Robert Crais and James Ellroy. One of the few writers whose tales are both brutal and beautiful, Zeltserman is a rising star of crime fiction."--Alex Green, Back Pages Books, Waltham, Mass.

Casting Pariah

There was one winner for my casting Pariah contest. Congratulations to Mark Sullivan of Silver Spring, Maryland for winning a signed copy of Bad Karma for his following casting:

Kyle Nevin – Matt Dillon
Danny Nevin – Kevin Dillon
Eve – Michele Hicks
Red Mahoney – Michael O’Keefe
Joe Whalley – James Cromwell
Nola – Olivia Wilde

My own dream cast would be:

Kyle Nevin – Russsell Crowe
Danny Nevin – Colin Farrell
Eve – Anne Hathaway
Red Mahoney – Malcolm McDowell
Joe Whalley – Ed Harris
Nola – Mila Kunis

Small Crimes in Italy

Fanucci Editore's cover for Small Crimes is a beauty. The book will be out in Italy in January.

Other news, the German publisher, Pulp Master, will be publishing the German foreign language versions of Pariah and Killer.

wanna read an excerpt from my Vampire Crimes?

When Paul Brazil, a good chap and a big fan of Small Crimes, asked if I'd guest blog for him I said sure, and decided to show a different side of my writing and put up a short excerpt from a vampire novel I've written (and which some hollywood people are hard at work trying to put together a film deal for). This is a different kind of vampire novel that what's being published these days. No sensitive heartthrob vampires, no teen romances. This is hardcore stuff. Ultra-violent. Think Sin City with vampires. Anyone wanting to take a look, you can find it at Paul Brazil's blog.

Washington Post on Pariah

"I didn't think a suspense story could get any more dark and twisted than Zeltserman's pulp masterpiece of last year, "Small Crimes." In that nasty little immorality tale, a crooked ex-cop bent on redemption gets released from prison and finds out that nobody -- not his ex-wife, not his young daughters, not even his elderly parents -- wants him back. The kicker is that they're right. By the end of "Small Crimes," I was wrung out thanks to the ingeniousness of Zeltserman's nonstop plot twists and the stark meanness of his universe. Now comes "Pariah," a doozy of a doom-laden crime story that not only makes merry with the justice system, but also satirizes those bottom feeders in the publishing industry who would sign Osama bin Laden to a six-figure contract for his memoirs, if only they could figure out which cave to send their lawyers into. If there's any other young writer out there who does crime noir better than Zeltserman, I don't even want to know. As it is, I can barely handle reading him without altogether losing whatever faith I've got left in humanity."

Read all of Maureen Corrigan's terrific review of Pariah.

Hard Feelings on Small Crimes

Hard Feelings had nothing but good feelings towards Pariah (their favorite crime novel of the year), and they seem to feel similarly towards Small Crimes:

"...rife with corruption and brutal violence and told from the criminal point of view. Released from prison after seven years for stabbing a D.A. in the face during an arson crime, ex-cop and addict Joe Denton finds the disfigured attorney gunning for him. Pressure mounts from all sides in this merciless, straight-to-hell story. Great, dark stuff."

I Love a Mystery on Pariah

"PARIAH is a suspense novel at its very best with a protagonist who is far, far over on the other side of the law. Zeltserman has outdone himself with this depiction of a near-psychopathic personality that is driven by its own strange set of moral principles. The portrayal rings too true. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED."

Read the complete review here.