“Who would have thought a queasy cabal of millionaires and billionaires would fuck a country in such a dead-eyed, remorseless fashion?”
This Thursday will see the release of Hunger, a brand new charity anthology from Ipswich-based independent publisher Urban Pigs Press. The collection includes my story ‘In the Land of the Pig (The Butcher is King)’.
I’ll be sharing more details regarding the anthology later this week, but in the meantime you can check out this interview I did with Urban Pigs Press co-founder James Jenkins to promote the anthology.
“It’s a mild day – far too hot for a cheap suit – and I’m sweating like a sex offender in a police line-up.”
I’m excited to reveal that my brand new e-book Slab Rats is out today!
Set in 2004, this story is a prequel to the other books in the Paignton Noir series.
I’m looking forward to seeing what readers make of it.
Here’s the synopsis:
A missing slab of coke. An ex-con surf pro in over his head. A series of unhinged Cornish drug dealers. Sounds like a job for Joe Rey…
When his ex-girlfriend Ani goes missing with a slab of cocaine belonging to a very dangerous man, Joe Rey is coerced into accompanying ex-con surfer Rico to look for her. After kicking up dust in their own back yard, the two men head to deepest, darkest Cornwall where their search sees them go toe-to-toe with a series of increasingly deranged local malcontents. With the clock ticking, will they manage to retrieve Ani and the cocaine in time?
SLAB RATS is the vicious new surf-noir thriller from the author of SKULL MEAT, SNUFF RACKET and SPINE FARM.
“Summers in Devon are characterised by long nights and short fuses. Winter days are grim, stunted affairs – sawn-off like shotguns – and it feels like the darkness is already closing in.”
My annual Paignton Noir Christmas story was published by Bristol Noir last week. Check out Mistletoe & Swines! Many thanks to Bristol Noir’s John Bowie for running the story!
“The elderly woman’s face explodes in a ruptured mess of cartilage and bone as my lumpen forehead makes contact with the bridge of her nose. That’s going to leave a fucking mark.”
Today I have a brand new short story online at All Due Respect: The Safe House.
I think it’s one of my best Paignton Noir stories to date, but I’m biased!
Thanks to ADR publisher Chris Rhatigan for running the story.
If you missed my 2020 ADR story, 49,000 Ways To Die, here’s the link.
“I scratch my balls and survey the prison car park, wondering which one of my dwindling pool of acquaintances is going to pick me up this time. There are men – and women – on both sides of the law who would like nothing more than to bundle me into a Transit van and bludgeon me with blunt objects before burying me in a shallow grave. I look over my shoulder. Governor Diggs is curtain-twitching in his office like a suburban voyeur. For all I know, he has his hands down his fucking pants as well. He’s definitely the kind of guy who could get physically aroused by the prospect of masked men inflicting extreme violence on me.”
Who’s ready for a new Paignton Noir e-book? Good, because Skeleton Crew is out today!
As with all of the other e-books, Skeleton Crew is a self-contained story, although it is worth reading Dirty Bullion first if you want to find out why Rey is in prison in the first place!
There are also appearances from characters we’ve met in Snuff Racket, Sin Clinic and Slug Bait, so regular readers are in for a treat!
Here’s the synopsis:
Fresh from his second stint in HMP Channings Wood, disgraced private investigator Joe Rey returns home to find out that his crumbling rooming house, the Black Regent, has been quietly acquired by Devon & Cornwall Constabulary and converted into a clandestine safe house to shelter witnesses to some of the Westcountry’s most horrific crimes. While he gathers his belongings – and enjoys one final drink in the TV lounge with decrepit elderly cops Benson and Hedges – a masked mob descend upon the building, in search of the sole occupant: a terrified woman, who is now ensconced in Rey’s former room. Fight or flight? What do you think? Welcome back to Paignton, Joe. There’s no place like home…
“A smarter man than me once said that good investigative work is about asking the right questions. I find that the quality of my work generally depends on how fucking hard I hit people.”
New book announcement!
My next short story collection, Ten Pints of Blood, will be published this summer, via Close To The Bone!
This book contains the Paignton Noir novelette Spine Farm and nine other stories – a mixture of flash fiction, obscure anthology stories and exclusive content.
Politics, perversion and pain in Paignton… I think it’s my most brutal book to date.
Artwork designed by Craig Douglas @ Close To The Bone.
Synopsis:
When Paignton private investigator Joe Rey finds himself enlisted by hapless local cops Benson and Hedges to help apprehend a vicious sex criminal known as the Ladyscraper, he ends up unearthing a grisly surprise in the midst of a derelict tract of farmland. What Rey discovers shocks the whole town to its core, and he sets out to unravel a decades-old mystery involving a cabal of powerful men who want their queasy secrets to remain dead and buried.
He may be psychologically damaged by the things he has seen and done, but Rey finds himself a man in demand, and his case-load piles up – setting him on a violent collision course with dealers, delinquents, degenerates and the damned.
Is Rey finally in hell, or is he just teetering on the brink?
“When I was a small child, my uncle Alvin was engaged to a carnival stripper called Magdalena. It seemed like an impossibly glamorous lifestyle at the time, and it was only years later – when I actually watched a carnival strip-show for myself – that I realised how horrific the prospect truly was.”
Ladies and gentlemen, boy and girls… my new book Repetition Kills You is out today, from All Due Respect (an imprint of Down & Out Books)!
Many thanks to the people who made this possible, namely All Due Respect publisher Chris Rhatigan and Eric Campbell and Lance Wright at Down & Out Books. Additional thanks to Nigel Bird, an editorial consultant at ADR, whose great suggestions really improved the manuscript.
Here’s the synopsis:
Repetition Kills You is an experimental noir. A novel-in-stories. A literary jigsaw puzzle.
The book comprises 26 short stories, presented in alphabetical order, from ‘Actress on a Mattress’ to ‘Zero Sum’. Combined in different ways, they tell a larger, more complex story. The narrative timeline is warped, like a blood-soaked Möbius Strip. It goes round in circles—like a deranged animal chasing its own tail.
The content is brutal and provocative: small-town pornography, gun-running, mutilation and violent, blood-streaked stories of revenge. The cast list includes sex offenders, serial killers, bare-knuckle fighters, carnies and corrupt cops. And a private eye with a dark past—and very little future.
Welcome to Paignton Noir.
And here’s a little taster. This is my story ‘The Carny’ being performed live in Hong Kong at the Liar’s League back in 2015:
“It is nine o’clock, and the Burning Wheel is emptier than a plundered grave. The warm summer air filters through the propped-open fire exit. It carries with it the tang of raw sewage.”
I am delighted to confirm that my new story The Repulsion Box is included in Issue #19 of the excellent Australian crime fiction journal Crime Factory.
This one is a nasty little slice of Paignton Noir, and I’m happy that it has found a home in such a great publication.
The Kindle version is dirt-cheap, so please check it out!
Late last year my story The Carny was selected by the Hong Kong offshoot of cult literary event Liars League for their ‘Rich & Poor’ event. The video has now emerged online, and you can find it here. The actor, Aaron Kahn, adds a great new dimension to the story, and I think his Americana-fuelled take on my Paignton Noir yarn is fantastic. Check it out!
“It was the day of my Uncle Alvin’s funeral when they came for me. I always knew they would.”
Earlier this month I made my second appearance at the excellent Horror Sleaze Trash. The story was called Queasy, which tells you everything you need to know.
If you enjoy Queasy, make sure you check out my previous Horror Sleaze Trash story, Actress On A Mattress.
Things To Do In Devon When You're Dead... 