The release of my debut novel, “Hell City,” marks the culmination of all my experience as a writer and artist.
Kirkus Reviews says on “Hell City”:
“A striking read that will leave you looking around the corner in fear…Shadow has crafted an entertaining mystery that borrows from the best in mystery and noir, while adding a heavy dose of modern paranoia. Jack Oldham, the compelling detective, is riddled with doubts and scars, and rather than being a standard cardboard cutout, he feels vivid and believable as a protagonist. Shadow deftly evokes the constant high alert in a modern security state… in this thrilling lookout for the bad guys’ next move.”
This time, Americans are the new weapons in the arsenal of a resurgent al-Qaida.
The wisdom is that al-Qaida is too broken, that all they can marshal in the post-bin-Laden world is the lone-wolf attack. But there are many layers of insurgency that are metastasizing in the real world. Cut off some heads here, and tails pop up there.
The U.S. State Department estimates that Yemen now has ten times the number of serious Qaida fighters as the Af-Pak region. Then there are the entrenched and powerful tribes like the Haqqani clan. And Qaida is now in Syria.
The guy on the subway can’t keep track of it all. A new headline, a new group almost daily. So he turns off and turns away. But the Qaida operatives never sleep.
The book’s hero, Jack Oldham, a commander on New York’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is the incarnation of vigilance. The former NYPD homicide dick never forgot how Qaida came back after the first attempt on the World Trade Center in 1993.
In “Hell City,” New York is ground zero once again as the former NYPD homicide dick and his crack but colorful crew pursue a maddening world of clues that take them through the grittiest precincts of the city, the back roads of America, the lawless regions of Pakistan, the faceless chat rooms of the Internet and the dark corridors of the military-intelligence complex -- not to mention the whiskey-tinged environs of The Christmas, a raunchy dive bar in Hell’s Kitchen frequented by Jack and other oft-recovering alcoholic cops.
Along the way, Jack strikes up an unlikely romance with the last lovechild of Beat-generation guru Neal Cassady as they share a lust for the city’s dark side and a yearning for a “lost” America. Through powerful, hard-boiled prose -- according to the publisher, Blue City Media -- the darkly comic, streetwise novel twists the mind, the language and the senses as it heads for a crash course with disaster.
My artistic career has ventured from urban poet to Nashville songwriter to recording artist to novelist.
A decade ago, my career had reached another milestone, with release of my debut album, "King Kong Serenade." At the time, my songwriting had finally become married to my poetic voice. The work, which received significant critical acclaim, is a rock-poet’s paean to New York City. The lyrics are raw and hard-hitting.
It’s no surprise that Gotham is once again at front and center, in my literary thriller, “Hell City.” In as sense, the city is a character in both works.
For the record, I have a bachelor’s in English from Lehman College, where I studied with the Pulitzer-Prize winning poet James Wright. Besides classic authors like Hemingway, my influences include the literary novelists Richard Price, Don DeLillo and William Kennedy.
Mostly, I’ve made my living in journalism and public relations, but I’ve also been a cook and New York City cab driver. Born and raised in the Bronx, I currently live with my family in upstate New York.
More about my career as an author can be found at http://allenshadow.me, while my career as a rock poet can be found at http://allenshadow.com.
