Only Pretty Damned
- Publisher
- NeWest Press
- Initial publish date
- Apr 2019
- Category
- Noir, Crime, Historical
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781988732534
- Publish Date
- Apr 2019
- List Price
- $19.95
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781988732541
- Publish Date
- Apr 2019
- List Price
- $11.99
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Description
Shortlisted for the Sixth Annual Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize - Literary Fiction Category!
Niall Howell's Only Pretty Damned is a taut noir that takes you behind the big top, revealing rough and tumble characters, murderous plots, and crooked schemes designed to keep Rowland's World Class Circus afloat for another season. When Toby, former trapeze artist turned disgruntled clown, begins seeing Gloria, a young and beautiful dancer longing for a bigger role under the spotlight, his hardboiled past resurfaces. Can he live without Genevieve, his ex-trapeze partner and lover? What ruthless actions will he take to regain his position as the headlining act? And will Toby's past repeat itself as he tries to untangle the ropes that bind him and take a leap to roaring applause?
About the author
Niall Howell was born and raised in Calgary, where he still resides. His short fiction has been published in The Feathertale Review and FreeFall and he holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Mount Royal University, and a Bachelor of Education from the University of Calgary. He enjoys playing bass, and obsessively collects records and comics. Only Pretty Damned is a part of the Nunatak First Fiction Series.
Awards
- Short-listed, Sixth Annual Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize - Literary Fiction Category
Excerpt: Only Pretty Damned (by (author) Niall Howell)
It's been three years since Wally Jakes died, and not a day goes by that I don't think of the old bastard.
The other chumps around this place, well, I'm sure they think of Wally often too--at least the ones who were around during the infamous Jake-obean era--but not as often as I do. And certainly not in the same way as I do.
See, Wally had a personality that was an acquired taste in the same way that sucking vinegar from a mangy sponge is an acquired taste. Nobody could stand the guy. Nobody except me. But then, I have a high tolerance for all things acidic.
I respected Wally, though I could sure see why others had a hard time digesting him. He was loud-mouthed, crass, insensitive, and horribly opinionated. He rarely shaved or showered, and dental hygiene mattered to him about as much as arithmetic matters to a snowman. And if all that weren't enough, Wally Jakes was also uglier than a couple of rats fucking on top of a pile of trash, which was partially due to a horse booting him square in the kisser when he was a kid, and partially due to him just being Wally Jakes. He was a natural pariah, born to be detested.
But as I said, I respected the guy. He wasn't a performer, like me, but I think that once you got right down to it, he and I were pretty much the same. Now, I don't mean to say that I'm a walking aerosolized can of human-repellant, like Wally, but on the inside, on the inside where it really mattered, we were the same. If you were to take a blade and carve us both down to our respective cores, once you scraped off all the pulpy muck and rinsed away the blood, you'd be staring at a matching set. Two of a kind. You see, like me, Wally did whatever needed to be done to keep things running around here. One day you'd see him tearing tickets, the next you'd see him cramming a suppository into an elephant's ass. Whatever the task, if it needed to be done, Wally would do it. He knew damn well that the show mattered more than anything. More than anything at all.
Editorial Reviews
Praise for Only Pretty Damned:
Howell has penned a slow-burning piece of crime fiction, where Rowland's grimy circus serves as a microcosm of the world at large--a place where unlikable characters are groomed to make a killing, whether inside the tent or out.
~ Booklist
"Only Pretty Damned is a stark, powerful noir, steeped in the stifling heat of the American South and building slowly, inexorably, to a boil."
~ Robert J. Wiersema, Quill & Quire
"This is a gritty novel that takes noir seriously."
~ Margaret Cannon, The Globe and Mail
"Niall Howell crafts a convincingly gritty big-top underworld full of shady entertainers and unscrupulous grifters."
~ Sheldon Birnie, The Winnipeg Free Press
"[S]olid from the first sentence--and this from someone who loathes the circus."
~ Andrew Wilmot, SubTerrain
"[Howell] captured me from the first sentence and never fully let me go."
~ Cosy Up With Kathy
"Only Pretty Damned is a character-driven noir that throws the reader into the backstage crises of a traveling circus. Amidst the tension, the backstabbing, and the long-held resentments of performers toward one another, the reader is brought into Toby's taut and colorful world. You can almost smell the popcorn emanating from the crowds watching."
~ Matthew Fowler, Mystery Scene
"[T]his deftly scripted and thoroughly reader engaging story showcases the writer's genuine flair for originality, memorable characters, and more plot twists and turns than a carnival roller coaster."
~ Midwest Book Review
"Only Pretty Damned announces the arrival of a formidable new talent in Canadian literature."
~ Mike Thorn, FreeFall Magazine
