Disintegration

TOP TEN NOVELS OF 2015—The Horror Bookshelf

"A dark existential thriller of unexpected twists, featuring a drowning man determined to pull the rest of the world under with him. A stunning and vital piece of work."

—Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspottingand Filth

In a brilliantly stylish breakthrough thriller for fans of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho and Will Christopher Baer's Kiss Me, Judas,here is the compelling tale of a man who has lost it all—and is now navigating a crooked, harrowing path to redemption.

Once a suburban husband and father, now the man has lost all sense of time. He retains only a few keepsakes of his former life: a handmade dining room table, an armoire and dresser from the bedroom, and a tape of the last message his wife ever left on their answering machine. These are memories of a man who no longer exists. Booze and an affair with a beautiful woman provide little relief, with the only meaning left in his life coming from his assignments. An envelope slipped under the door of his apartment with the name and address of an unpunished evildoer. The unspoken directive to kill. And every time he does, he marks the occasion with a memento: a tattoo. He has a lot of tattoos.

But into this unchanging existence seep unsettling questions. How much of what he feels and sees can he trust? How much is a lie designed to control him? He will risk his own life—and the lives of everyone around him—to find out.

EARLY PRAISE FOR DISINTEGRATION:

"Sweet hot hell, Richard Thomas writes like a man possessed, a man on fire, a guy with a gun to his head. And you'll read Disintegrationlike there's a gun to yours, too. A twisted masterpiece."

—Chuck Wendig, author of Blackbirdsand Double Dead

"This novel is so hard-hitting it should come with its own ice-pack. Richard Thomas is the wild child of Raymond Chandler and Chuck Palahniuk, a neo-noirist who brings to life a gritty, shadow-soaked, bullet-pocked Chicago as the stage for this compulsively readable crime drama."

—Benjamin Percy, author of The Dead Landsand Red Moon

"Thomas builds his universe and its population with terse prose and dynamic, often horrifyingly visceral imagery that unspools with grand weirdness and intensity. Then he rips that universe apart, brick by bloody brick. Disintegrationis provocative. It's also damned fine noir."

—Laird Barron, author of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us Alland The Croning

"A sodden, stumbling anti-hero in a noir so dark it makes much of the rest of the genre seem like Disney movies by comparison. Gritty, obsessive, and compulsively readable."

—Brian Evenson, author of Immobilityand Windeye

"Disintegrationis gritty neo-noir; a psycho-sexual descent into an unhinged psyche and an underworld Chicago that could very well stand in for one of the rings of Dante's Hell. Richard Thomas' depraved-doomed-philosopher hitman is your guide. I suggest you do as he says and follow him, if you know what's good for you."

—Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghostsand The Little Sleep

"In sharp, icy prose that cuts like a glacial wind, Richard Thomas' dark Chicago tale keeps us absolutely riveted to the very end."

—Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Timeand Knockemstiff