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.
"Thomas gleefully captures the hard-boiled setting in a propulsive story that reads like Frank Miller's Sin City with a little slap and tickle here and there."--Kirkus Reviews
A finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBT Fantasy/Science Fiction/Horror!
Autorentext
Lee Thomas is the Lambda Literary Award and Bram Stoker Award-winning author of more than 20 books, including:
Butcher's Road
The German
The Dust of Wonderland
Like Light for Flies
Torn
Stained
In the Closet, Under the Bed
Ash Street
Writing as Thomas Pendleton and Dallas Reed, he is the author of the novels, Mason, Shimmer, and The Calling, from HarperTeen. He is also the co-author (with Stefan Petrucha) of the Wicked Dead series of books for young adults.
Lee currently lives in Austin, TX.