Private Investigator Terrance Blake spends most of his days shadowed by an event from his past, while dismantling the lives of those driven by the masochistic need to confirm the lies they deny are cold, hard truths, until Hollywood socialite Jane Teagarden calls him for only the third time in years with news on the whereabouts of her runaway brother, Marlon.
Marlon Teagarden has been a ghost for ten years, traveling through the underbelly of society as a means of blotting out a past allegedly rife with child abuse, until he is chosen to Ride the Centipede, leading to the ultimate experience, courtesy of literary translator of languages and drug-infused visions from inner and outer space, William S. Burroughs.
Just your average road trip chase through the dark frontier of addiction and alternative realities gone sideways.
Not quite.
Also along for the ride, at the behest of a mysterious employer, is a nuclear-infused force of corrupt nature, “some kind of new breed of human and radiation, a blotch, an aberration, cancer with teeth.”
Allow me to introduce you to Rudolf.
Rudolf Chernobyl.
Let the games begin...
John Claude Smith
John Claude Smith originally wanted to be a horror writer; now he’s not sure what it is he writes, he just knows it is dark, and he’s the one holding a flashlight, shining light on those places most people would want to avoid, scribbling notes.
He has written fiction, poetry and bad lyrics for as long as he can remember. At a point when he decided to get serious with fiction, sending out stories and getting a few acceptances in the early 1990s, he was side-tracked for many years by music journalism (as JC Smith), including stints as the industrial, experimental, gothic, metal, and all fringe categories reviewer for a variety of magazines including Outburn, Industrial Nation, Side-Line, and
