A few years back, I stumbled across Dead Boys, a short story collection by Richard Lange. I loved the way he wrote, and how he created and constructed characters, and he became an author I always kept an eye open for. Since then, he’s published a handful of interesting, gripping novels of crime fiction, including the LA noir The Smack. In 2021, he’s taking a swerve into horror/fantasy territory with Rovers, which I’m really looking forward to reading:
Two immortal brothers crisscross the American Southwest to elude a murderous biker gang and protect a young woman in this tautly paced thriller…
Summer, 1976. Jesse and his brother, Edgar, are on the road in search of victims. They’re rovers, nearly indestructible nocturnal beings who must consume human blood in order to survive. For seventy years they’ve lurked on the fringes of society, roaming from town to town, dingy motel to dingy motel, stalking the transients, addicts, and prostitutes they feed on.
This hard-boiled supernatural hell-ride kicks off when the brothers encounter a young woman who disrupts their grim routine, forcing Jesse to confront his past and plunging his present into deadly chaos as he finds himself scrambling to save her life. The story plays out through the eyes of the brothers, a grieving father searching for his son’s murderer, and a violent gang of rover bikers, coming to a shattering conclusion in Las Vegas on the eve of America’s bicentennial.
Richard Lange’s Rovers is due to be published by Mulholland Books in North America and in the UK, on July 27th, 2021.
Civilian Reader 