John Murray have bought the UK and Commonwealth rights to THE FIRST STONE and the two subsequent novels in Elliot Hall’s STRANGE TRILOGY.
In an America governed by Christian extremists, all civil liberties have been curtailed: women are to be kept in suitable employment until called to marriage and motherhood, gay men are being ‘cured’ of their homosexuality, and citizens are encouraged to turn witness against the immoralities of their friends.
On the night the Crusade of Love arrives in New York City, seeking to root out and document all sin in the city, high-ranking evangelist Brother Isaiah is found strangled in his hotel room. Enter, then, Felix Strange, veteran soldier turned Private Eye – and a patsy from the very beginning. In seven days time, Brother Isaiah is due to make his latest televised proclamation; in seven days’ time, his death will be revealed to the world. But for Strange the urgency is much greater than the murder: a veteran of the war to implement God’s plan for the Middle East, he is stricken by a syndrome not acknowledged by any official source, and must somehow find the means of purchasing the drugs he needs to keep him alive. Seven days, then, to save himself and change the world.
A neo-noir detective novel drawing on the best traditions of Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy, THE FIRST STONE is less a state-of-the-nation address than a defiant two-fingers raised at an establishment seeking to rein in the rights of its citizenry, and a literate page-turner from beginning to end.
Italian rights to the trilogy went, at auction, to Nerri Pozza, and were pre-empted in Germany by DTV.
19 Mar 2008