NEVER COUNT OUT THE DEAD Boston Teran's debut, God is a Bullet, a taut, dark, and astonishing literary suspense novel, was short-listed for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel and won England's Crime Writers Association's John Creasey Memorial Dagger for Best First Novel. Now, with NEVER COUNT OUT THE DEAD, Teran exceeds the extraordinary achievement of his debut, delivering a tour de force tale of a murder gone wrong and a victim bent on revenge. In a rundown Los Angeles bungalow, Shay Storey sits across a battered Formica table watching her mother clean the semi-automatic they will use for a killing. It is 1987 and Shay is just thirteen. Their intended victim is a local policeman named Victor Sully. Shay and her mother shoot him and bury him in a shallow grave in the desert northeast of Los Angeles, but somehow, some way, Sully claws his way to survival. His life, though, is destroyed anyway, and he slips out of Los Angeles under cover of darkness, a broken man. It is more than ten years later that these three lost souls meet again to play out the inevitable drama set in motion by that first violent meeting in the desert, each searching for revenge, and perhaps, redemption. Riveting, powerful, and brilliantly written, NEVER COUNT OUT THE DEAD is an unforgettable reading experience that will linger in your brain long after the last page is turned. Rights Information Publisher: St. Martin's, Hardcover (May 2001) St. Martin's Minotaur, Mass market paperback (October 13, 2002) Territory: World Rights Available: Film/TV Reviews: "crackles with the electric energy of a summer storm..." - New York Times Book Review "[Never Count Out the Dead] reveals a definite maturation...Taut rather than bloated, the novel is as edgy as a hollow-eyed junkie and as extravagant as a drift of desert orchids. Teran retakes the stage with the assurance of an elegantly seasoned performer." - Amazon.com "Nightmarish and utterly absorbing." - Booklist "Award-winning crime novelist Teran jars the soul with this chaotic, murderous tale...Teran's first novel, God Is a Bullet, was nominated for an Edgar. This, his second, cements his status as a pulp virtuoso with a gothic sensibility." - Publishers Weekly "Teran manages to create a fistful of memorable characters while telling a terrific story in a smart, yeasty, poetic, totally original voice...a writer who has quickly blasted a place for himself in the rockface of the genre." - Chicago Tribune "Man, do these pages have punch." - Detroit Free Press "Boston Teran first caught the public's eye with his ferocious, Edgar-nominated crime novel God Is a Bullet. In his equally ferocious second novel, Never Count Out the Dead, Teran confirms the promise implicit in his remarkable debut, giving us one of the grimmest, most relentless thrillers that has come my way in months...a bruising, moving account...Never Count Out the Dead is a painful, exhilarating novel...it is aimed at readers with adventurous, even idiosyncratic tastes. Its narrative power and febrile intensity lift it well above the level of more conventional suspense novels, into a category all its own." - Barnes & Noble "...fully the equal of Bullet in its intensity and its grittiness or just plain dirtiness of the soul...Teran displays a deep, loving knowledge of Southern California, particularly its underbellies." - San Jose Mercury News "What really grabs you is not the novel's complex plot, fully realized characters, and open-throttle pace, but its razor-keen sociological observations and eccentric language." - Minneapolis Star-Tribune "A motel-room-meth-lab explosion of a novel...Teran provides a pure, exhiliratingly disturbing vision." - L. A. Weekly "Deliciously pernicious, archly melodramatic mean-streets revenger: Teran's second helping of flawed, brutal L.A. noir is just as annoyingly good as his first" - Kirkus Reviews Blurbs: "Like of shot of adrenaline straight to the heart...It's a Tom Waits song covered by Nine Inch Nails -- the hardest of hardcore, flaunting its broken veins and trackmarks, but under all the scar tissue there's a broken-down romantic's heart that still believes, against the odds, in redemption." - Lauren Henderson "Grim, glorious gothic...the tension ratchets up like a thumbscrew in the hands of a master inquisitor...a terrifying glimpse into lives that make you count your blessings until dawn." - Val McDermid "Jim Thompson's crown and his fury seem to have passed to Boston Teran, the new voice of pulp fiction." - Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River Purchase at Amazon.com

NEVER COUNT OUT THE DEAD

Boston Teran's debut, God is a Bullet, a taut, dark, and astonishing literary suspense novel, was short-listed for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel and won England's Crime Writers Association's John Creasey Memorial Dagger for Best First Novel.

Now, with NEVER COUNT OUT THE DEAD, Teran exceeds the extraordinary achievement of his debut, delivering a tour de force tale of a murder gone wrong and a victim bent on revenge.

In a rundown Los Angeles bungalow, Shay Storey sits across a battered Formica table watching her mother clean the semi-automatic they will use for a killing. It is 1987 and Shay is just thirteen. Their intended victim is a local policeman named Victor Sully. Shay and her mother shoot him and bury him in a shallow grave in the desert northeast of Los Angeles, but somehow, some way, Sully claws his way to survival.

His life, though, is destroyed anyway, and he slips out of Los Angeles under cover of darkness, a broken man. It is more than ten years later that these three lost souls meet again to play out the inevitable drama set in motion by that first violent meeting in the desert, each searching for revenge, and perhaps, redemption.

Riveting, powerful, and brilliantly written, NEVER COUNT OUT THE DEAD is an unforgettable reading experience that will linger in your brain long after the last page is turned.

Rights Information

Publisher: St. Martin's, Hardcover (May 2001)
St. Martin's Minotaur, Mass market paperback (October 13, 2002)

Territory: World

Rights Available: Film/TV

Reviews:
"crackles with the electric energy of a summer storm..." - New York Times Book Review

"[Never Count Out the Dead] reveals a definite maturation...Taut rather than bloated, the novel is as edgy as a hollow-eyed junkie and as extravagant as a drift of desert orchids. Teran retakes the stage with the assurance of an elegantly seasoned performer." - Amazon.com

"Nightmarish and utterly absorbing." - Booklist

"Award-winning crime novelist Teran jars the soul with this chaotic, murderous tale...Teran's first novel, God Is a Bullet, was nominated for an Edgar. This, his second, cements his status as a pulp virtuoso with a gothic sensibility." - Publishers Weekly

"Teran manages to create a fistful of memorable characters while telling a terrific story in a smart, yeasty, poetic, totally original voice...a writer who has quickly blasted a place for himself in the rockface of the genre." - Chicago Tribune

"Man, do these pages have punch." - Detroit Free Press

"Boston Teran first caught the public's eye with his ferocious, Edgar-nominated crime novel God Is a Bullet. In his equally ferocious second novel, Never Count Out the Dead, Teran confirms the promise implicit in his remarkable debut, giving us one of the grimmest, most relentless thrillers that has come my way in months...a bruising, moving account...Never Count Out the Dead is a painful, exhilarating novel...it is aimed at readers with adventurous, even idiosyncratic tastes. Its narrative power and febrile intensity lift it well above the level of more conventional suspense novels, into a category all its own." - Barnes & Noble

"...fully the equal of Bullet in its intensity and its grittiness or just plain dirtiness of the soul...Teran displays a deep, loving knowledge of Southern California, particularly its underbellies." - San Jose Mercury News

"What really grabs you is not the novel's complex plot, fully realized characters, and open-throttle pace, but its razor-keen sociological observations and eccentric language." - Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"A motel-room-meth-lab explosion of a novel...Teran provides a pure, exhiliratingly disturbing vision." - L. A. Weekly

"Deliciously pernicious, archly melodramatic mean-streets revenger: Teran's second helping of flawed, brutal L.A. noir is just as annoyingly good as his first" - Kirkus Reviews

Blurbs:
"Like of shot of adrenaline straight to the heart...It's a Tom Waits song covered by Nine Inch Nails -- the hardest of hardcore, flaunting its broken veins and trackmarks, but under all the scar tissue there's a broken-down romantic's heart that still believes, against the odds, in redemption." - Lauren Henderson

"Grim, glorious gothic...the tension ratchets up like a thumbscrew in the hands of a master inquisitor...a terrifying glimpse into lives that make you count your blessings until dawn." - Val McDermid
"Jim Thompson's crown and his fury seem to have passed to Boston Teran, the new voice of pulp fiction." - Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River

Purchase at Amazon.com