THE PISTOL POETS The Edgar-nominated author of Gun Monkeys is back with a thrill-a-minute suspense novel that mixes crime and academia—with hilarious results. Here Victor Gischler draws us into a wild and wicked world, where tenured professors are busy burying bodies, cash-up-front P.I.’s hunt for missing coeds and one desperate street-tough has to decide which he’d rather be: a live poet or a dead criminal. An unlucky grad student just got himself killed in a robbery gone bad. And as lowly drug lieutenant Harold Jenks races with the killer out of the alley, a light goes off in his head: He’ll steal the dead kid’s identity. Now Jenks, who once lorded it over seven square blocks in East St. Louis, is headed due west. With a .32 in his pocket, a 9mm Glock taped across his back, and a rap sheet nearly as long as Finnegans Wake, he’s cruising the halls of academia as Eastern Oklahoma U’s newest grad student, looking for action and hoping he can stay one couplet ahead of his violent past. While this new bad boy on campus makes mincemeat of his metaphors, across campus visiting professor Jay Morgan has a more pressing problem: What to do about the dead coed in his bed. The professor’s no killer, but try telling that to private eye Deke Stubbs. With the professor on the lam and Stubbs hot on his trail, more trouble blows into town. Now, as St. Louis drug boss Red Zach and his minions converge on Fumbee, Oklahoma, looking for a consignment of missing cocaine, the bullets start flying faster than the zingers at a faculty hate fest. For Morgan and Jenks, now desperate fugitives from poetic justice, survival means learning new skills—and learning fast. Because if they find out they’re bottom-of-the-class, that means they’re already dead. Featuring the sleaziest, sorriest, and most captivating group of criminal lowlifes, sexed-up academics, poets, and rappers ever to collide in one crime novel, THE PISTOL POETS speeds deliriously to its electrifying payoff. Rights Information Publisher: Delacorte Press, Hardcover (February 3, 2004) Bantam Dell, Mass market paperback (January 25, 2005) Territory: World Rights Available: Film/TV Reviews: "THE PISTOL POETS is in numerous ways politically incorrect, which decent satire almost has to be, and its twisted tale of gangsters and poets, if not profound, will brighten the day of anyone blessed with a sense of humor." - The Washington Post "Gischler deftly weaves together these elements and more and comes up with plenty of laughs...all embedded within a small war of bullets and blood. This is a far-fetched but fast and viciously enjoyable read." - Publishers Weekly "If you liked the lunatic pace and dark humor of Victor Gischler's "Gun Monkeys," you should be equally delighted by his second effort--an assault on what passes for academia at a sleepy school called Eastern Oklahoma University." - Chicago Tribune "[Gischler] knows how to make his characters not only hilarious caricatures, but also just intelligent enough to be worth rooting for. The Pistol Poets might not have the literary cachet of other campus life novels, such as Richard Russo's Straight Man, but it's just as funny and twice as off the wall. It should have been called Poetic Justice." - Rocky Mountain News "While Pelecanos and Lehane are very good, and Scott Phillips is a talent to be reckoned with, Victor Gischler is the real deal. The author of GUN MONKEYS has come back with something even better...In the midst of mayhem, Gischler has constructed the best send-up of academia I have ever encountered in a crime novel...THE PISTOL POETS is pounding, relentless and breathless. And it's a fantastic book." - Mystery News "Thoroughly enjoyable…utterly entertaining." - Booklist Blurbs: Purchase at Amazon.com

THE PISTOL POETS

The Edgar-nominated author of Gun Monkeys is back with a thrill-a-minute suspense novel that mixes crime and academia—with hilarious results. Here Victor Gischler draws us into a wild and wicked world, where tenured professors are busy burying bodies, cash-up-front P.I.’s hunt for missing coeds and one desperate street-tough has to decide which he’d rather be: a live poet or a dead criminal.

An unlucky grad student just got himself killed in a robbery gone bad. And as lowly drug lieutenant Harold Jenks races with the killer out of the alley, a light goes off in his head: He’ll steal the dead kid’s identity. Now Jenks, who once lorded it over seven square blocks in East St. Louis, is headed due west. With a .32 in his pocket, a 9mm Glock taped across his back, and a rap sheet nearly as long as Finnegans Wake, he’s cruising the halls of academia as Eastern Oklahoma U’s newest grad student, looking for action and hoping he can stay one couplet ahead of his violent past.

While this new bad boy on campus makes mincemeat of his metaphors, across campus visiting professor Jay Morgan has a more pressing problem: What to do about the dead coed in his bed. The professor’s no killer, but try telling that to private eye Deke Stubbs. With the professor on the lam and Stubbs hot on his trail, more trouble blows into town. Now, as St. Louis drug boss Red Zach and his minions converge on Fumbee, Oklahoma, looking for a consignment of missing cocaine, the bullets start flying faster than the zingers at a faculty hate fest. For Morgan and Jenks, now desperate fugitives from poetic justice, survival means learning new skills—and learning fast. Because if they find out they’re bottom-of-the-class, that means they’re already dead.

Featuring the sleaziest, sorriest, and most captivating group of criminal lowlifes, sexed-up academics, poets, and rappers ever to collide in one crime novel, THE PISTOL POETS speeds deliriously to its electrifying payoff.

Rights Information

Publisher: Delacorte Press, Hardcover (February 3, 2004)
Bantam Dell, Mass market paperback (January 25, 2005)

Territory: World

Rights Available: Film/TV

Reviews:
"THE PISTOL POETS is in numerous ways politically incorrect, which decent satire almost has to be, and its twisted tale of gangsters and poets, if not profound, will brighten the day of anyone blessed with a sense of humor." - The Washington Post

"Gischler deftly weaves together these elements and more and comes up with plenty of laughs...all embedded within a small war of bullets and blood. This is a far-fetched but fast and viciously enjoyable read." - Publishers Weekly

"If you liked the lunatic pace and dark humor of Victor Gischler's "Gun Monkeys," you should be equally delighted by his second effort--an assault on what passes for academia at a sleepy school called Eastern Oklahoma University." - Chicago Tribune

"[Gischler] knows how to make his characters not only hilarious caricatures, but also just intelligent enough to be worth rooting for. The Pistol Poets might not have the literary cachet of other campus life novels, such as Richard Russo's Straight Man, but it's just as funny and twice as off the wall. It should have been called Poetic Justice." - Rocky Mountain News

"While Pelecanos and Lehane are very good, and Scott Phillips is a talent to be reckoned with, Victor Gischler is the real deal. The author of GUN MONKEYS has come back with something even better...In the midst of mayhem, Gischler has constructed the best send-up of academia I have ever encountered in a crime novel...THE PISTOL POETS is pounding, relentless and breathless. And it's a fantastic book." - Mystery News

"Thoroughly enjoyable…utterly entertaining." - Booklist

Blurbs:

Purchase at Amazon.com