Word Made Flesh

Why would two Eastern European meatboys want to whack an innocent cab driver? That's the question that occurs to Gilrein as Raban and Blumfeld press the gun barrel into his mouth. Does it have something to do with the ritual death-by-flencing of Leo Tani? Or does the answer involve Gilrein's ex-lover, now working as a librarian for a bibliomaniac gangster? Or maybe the whole thing has something to do with the Inspector, inventor of the notorious Methodology? And how does Bobby Oster figure in the mix, with his crew of murder-for-hire rogue cops who call themselves The Magicians? To find the answers, Gilrein will drive the night streets of his hometown and face down more than one demon from his past. From the Vacuum, where child-artists are held captive in veal pens and forced to forge graphic novels, to the Houdini Lounge, where the second annual immigrant death-match is being marketed, Gilrein will wander the underworld, collecting stories and looking for absolution. In the end, he'll brush up against "Alicia's Tale" and learn new truths about the terrifying negotiations always taking place between the storyteller and the audience in the city of Quinsigamond.

"Word Made Flesh is a great book, as intelligent as it is thrilling. Jack O'Connell writes with a rare, dark grace. The alluring nocturnal world he draws us into lies smack dab between Chandler's and Kafka's. Word Made Flesh disturbed me and I mean that with the greatest of admiration." – Michael Ledwidge, author of The Narrowback

"Word Made Flesh made the hair stand up on the back of my mind. Dark, cunning, and wickedly clever, it outsmarts you at just about every turn. Terrific stuff." – Jonathan Carroll, author of Kissing the Beehive

"Word Made Flesh took my breath away and replaced it with an hallucinatory mixture of nitrous oxide and a cold wind from a future world that's both eerily frightening and erotically mesmerizing. More than anything else that I've read in the last ten years, this is where the writing of the next millenium is going to happen: a brilliant synthesis of science fiction and noir sensibilities." – K.W. Jeter, author of Dr. Adder and Noir

"A bloody, Borgesian nightmare, Word Made Flesh exists at the confluence of suspense, of horror, of roman and detective novel, using all of these approaches and more to eviscerate the language and reveal the Wormtown inside each one of us." – Neil Gaiman, author of Neverwhere

"A chase story, an allegory, and a brilliant riff on language. Jack O'Connell is the future of the dark, literary suspense novel." – James Ellroy, author of L.A. Confidential

"A marvelous mystery about the birth and death of language, the strange, chaotic power of the printed page in our sad, high-tech universe, and the need of one cop-turned-tax driver to pull memory from amnesia." – Jerome Charyn, author of Citizen Sidel

"A triumph of style and content: a world of such dark, repellent beauty, teetering forever on the edge of nightmare - yet shot with rays of curdled sunlight. As its damaged characters slug their way out of the back streets of language a whole new voice is born, the most compelling I've heard in a long time. Assured and utterly satisfying." – Michael Marshall Smith, author of Spares

"A writer of terrific gifts." – The Independent on Sunday (London)

"One of the most original novels I've read in years. Made up of equal parts hard-boiled detective story, futuristic satire, myth, and metafiction...a heady concoction...Imagine Kafka writing The Maltese Falcon, or Borges or Pynchon one of Raymond Chandler's novels and you only begin to get a sense of what this funny, complex, and thoroughly entertaining novel is about." – Michael C. White, author of A Brother's Blood

"With Word Made Flesh Jack O'Connell has creeped up on the greats and scared them silent. He ignites your good dreams and your bad dreams but, as is the case with only the very best writers, he leaves you uncertain which is which. A mesmerizing novel, rich with pleasurable nuance and sudden shock and tricks of the senses. A terrific novel in all the worthwhile ways." – Daniel Woodrell, author of Tomato Red

"Think BLADE RUNNER as imagined by Kafka in a dream of Fritz Lang. A rhetorical exercise in satiric impersonation that's paced, reactive, and laced with the ghosts of screams." – THE GUARDIAN (London)