Available Dark: A Crime Novel [Hardcover]

Elizabeth Hand (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 14, 2012

“A skin-blistering crime novel, as edgy and black as dried blood on a moonlit night.”

--Robert Crais

 

Elizabeth Hand’s writing honors include the Shirley Jackson Award, the James Tiptree Award, the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and many others. Now, this uniquely gifted storyteller brings us a searing and iconoclastic crime novel, in which photographer Cass Neary, introduced in the underground classic Generation Loss, finds herself drawn into the shadowy world of crime in Scandinavia’s coldest corners.

 

As this riveting tour-de-force opens, the police already want to talk to Cass about a mysterious death she was involved with previously, but before they can bring her in, Cass accepts a job offer from overseas and hops on a plane.

 

In Helsinki, she authenticates a series of disturbing but stunning images taken by a famous fashion photographer who has cut himself off from the violent Nordic music scene where he first made his reputation.  Paid off by her shady employer, she buys a one-way ticket to Reykjavik, in search of a lover from her own dark past.

 

But when the fashion photographer’s mutilated corpse is discovered back in Finland, Cass finds herself sucked into a vortex of ancient myth and betrayal, vengeance and serial murder, set against a bone-splintering soundtrack of black metal and the terrifying beauty of the sunless Icelandic wilderness.  In this eagerly awaited sequel to the award-winning Generation Loss, Cass Neary finds her own worst fears confirmed: it’s always darkest before it turns completely black.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In this brilliant sequel to Hand’s acclaimed literary thriller, Generation Loss (2007), Cassandra Neary, “a burned out, aging punk with a dead gaze,” who subsists largely on alcohol and speed, confronts darkness nearly beyond her comprehension. Wanted by police for questioning about a death in Maine, she welcomes the opportunity to leave the States to evaluate some photos in Helsinki for a collector. A cult figure for her earlier photography book, Dead Girls, Cass is stunned by five photos of fresh corpses posed to represent Finnish folktale figures and taken by a renowned former fashion photographer known for the flashes of light in his work. But when she goes on to Iceland, on the track of the lover of her teens, Quinn O’Boyle, death seems to follow her, as she learns of the murders of those with whom she associated in Finland. Cass, like this book’s readers, sinks deeper and deeper into the darkness of the unforgiving Nordic winter and the surrounding events, with their throbbing undercurrent of metal music and encroaching atmosphere of old Norse religions. A flash of incandescence counters final threats of death, and the all-encompassing darkness is leavened by a glimmer of hope. Stunning. --Michele Leber

Review

Praise for Available Dark

 

"A hair-raising novel of psychological suspense. This is a series I hope will continue."

--The Globe and Mail

 

"The millions who devoured Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” trilogy will not flinch at Hand’s dark subject matter... Expect this novel to break out onto best seller lists."
--Library Journal

 

"Cass Neary... makes Lisbeth Salander seem like a model of mental stability... Stunning."
--Publishers Weekly (starred)

“Very, very good…In Hand's thriller, we see what Lisbeth Salander would look like in 30 years, if she were tall, blonde and plausible…Hand is a bonafide literary artist.”
--Lev Grossman, Time

"In the spirit of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo... As the dark Nordic forest thickens, so does the plot. Larsson fanatics may be unable to resist."
--The New York Post

“Pulsing with tension throughout… charged with its own chilling luminosity."
--The Washington Post

"A strong writer. Her studies of artists and musicians are something fierce, and there’s a deadly beauty to her bleak rendering of the Nordic landscape."
--Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times

"Cass Neary could make Lisbeth Salander look like a suburban housewife... A stunning look at a woman forever teetering on the edge."
--Oline H. Cogdill, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

"Brilliant...stunning." 
--Booklist (starred) 

"Award-winner Hand... brings her great skill to a mystery series that’s equally dark and enthralling... Beautiful writing and elegant, intelligent style make this a pleasure."
--RT Book Reviews (4 1/2 stars) 

"A gasoline burn of a book; but it's also a tightly-plotted noir thriller...Unputdownable."
--The Rejectionist
  

“A brilliant sequel to Hand’s acclaimed literary thriller Generation Loss… Stunning.”

--Booklist (starred review)

 

“Fiercely frightening yet hauntingly beautiful, with a startling heroine you’ll never forget… Shimmers with gorgeous writing even as it scares the dickens out of you.”

--Tess Gerritsen

 

“Cass Neary is one of literature’s great noir anti-heroes… Ferocious, aching with compassion and cruelly brilliant, Available Dark is a sinful pleasure.”
--Katherine Dunn

 

Praise for Generation Loss

 

“Rightly compared with the sort of crime fiction turned out by the late, great Patricia Highsmith ... Hand expertly ratchets up the suspense until it's at the level of a high-pitched scream."
--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel  

 

"Cass Neary, the battle-scarred shutterbug of Elizabeth Hand's incendiary literary thriller is a marvel."
--Los Angeles Times

 

"Brilliantly written and completely original, Hand’s novel is an achievement with a capital A.”
--Booklist (starred review)

 

Praise for Elizabeth Hand’s Other Work

“A superior stylist.”

--The New York Times Book Review on Waking the Moon

 

“Hypnotic… Moves Hand’s work into the territory of John Fowles and A.S. Byatt.”

--Locus on Mortal Love

 

“Elizabeth Hand has the written the best book of her generation.”

--Peter Straub on Mortal Love

 

“As noteworthy in its way as Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale.”

--People on Winterlong

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; First Edition edition (February 14, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780312585945
• ISBN-13: 978-0312585945
• ASIN: 0312585942
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #879,285 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A couple of years after seeing Patti Smith perform, Elizabeth Hand flunked out of college and became involved in the nascent punk scenes in DC and NYC. From 1979 to 1986 she worked at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air & Space Museum; she was eventually readmitted to university to study cultural anthropology, and received her B.A. She is the author of many novels, including Winterlong, Waking the Moon (Tiptree and Mythopoeic Award-Winner), Glimmering, and Mortal Love, and three collections of stories, including the recent Saffron and Brimstone. Her fiction has received the Nebula, World Fantasy, Mythopeoic, Tiptree, and International Horror Guild Awards, and her novels have been chose as New York Times and Washington Post Notable Books. She has also been awarded a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship. A regular contributor to the Washington Post Book World and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Hand lives with her family on the Maine Coast.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Continuing (Dark and Cold) Aventures of Cassandra Neary February 28, 2012

By M. Griffin

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Available Dark follows Cassandra Neary, a damaged, self-destructive and somewhat washed-up art photographer, who first appeared in Hand's 2007 novel, Generation Loss. A novel with Neary as a protagonist is bound to be a wild ride. She's prone to sudden changes in direction, abruptly taking off for an isolated island off of Maine (in Generation Loss), or to meet a shady Finnish collector of death-obsessed photographs, or chase a long-lost friend/lover who might be in Iceland. Along the way she encounters murder and threat, and often manages to multiply her own troubles by the following her own badly damaged sense of direction. Complicating all this is Cass's painful personal history, which lingers in her present despite the passage of years. Some people deal with adversity by bucking up and getting on with things, while others self-medicate using a cocktail of antisocial behavior, emotional avoidance, and a constant flow of mood-altering substances. Cass fits in the latter, and for this reason her problems aren't so much solved as left to accumulate, trailing in her wake.

Such a compelling central character does much of the work in engaging the reader. On top of this we have unusual settings (Reykjavik and Iceland's outlying areas are especially exotic, well drawn here) and such intriguing milieu as the worlds of photography concerned with death and folklore, the Scandinavian Black Metal scene, and obscure underground cult-like groups dedicated to resurrecting ancient Norse worship. The book is packed with vivid details, bizarre characters, and fascinating and varied artistic and cultural obsessions.

Most of Hand's earlier writing was constrained to Fantasy and related genres, but here she steps away from the impossible.... Available Dark concerns itself with real world situations, characters and conflicts, yet these convey all the bizarre extremity of the strangest alt-world fantasy. It's possible some of her devoted readers may be disappointed by what is essentially a mainstream thriller, but I don't feel Available Dark suffers in the least from the lack of overt "impossible" elements. Normally if one of my favorite genre writers took a detour into the mainstream, I might say, "That's nice, now get back to what you do best." In this case, I find the character and settings so compelling I'd happily follow a Cass Neary series.

Hand seems to me a writer's writer, less concerned with superficial effects or pursuit of the latest publishing industry fad, more interested in crafting artful, expressive prose and shining light upon genuine and true "real life" moments. With Available Dark, Elizabeth Hand walks the tightrope between more accessible mainstream entertainments on one hand, and on the other maintaining a high artistic standing in the unflinching exploration of the dark and exotic. Available Dark constitutes yet another proof of Hand's status as one of the very best writers working today, in any genre. I can't wait for more Cassandra Neary. Read more ›

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars (4.5 stars) "If you give your little finger to the Devil, it will take your whole hand." February 14, 2012

By Luan Gaines HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Hand's novel is by turns fascinating and repellent, drug-fueled, disconnected photojournalist Cassandra Neary bearing the scars of her love affair with East Village nihilism, long past her sell-by date, yet still enamored of subjects no longer animated by a life force, her book of images, Dead Girls, a cult collector's item. Her shabby apartment cluttered with memories and the detritus of self-abuse, Cass's gift and burden is an artist's eye for genius, a nirvana rarely reached since those first heady years, the craving for chemicals unchanged. An old photograph of a former lover that arrives in the mail from Reykjavik, Iceland, and an unexpected assignment to evaluate a series of "murderabilia" images being sold by a famous former fashion photographer in Helsinki, Finland, are the catalysts for Neary's journey across the globe, the first to earn much-needed funds, the second to reunite with her soul's jagged mirror-image, Quinn O'Boyle.

"I don't care who's buying the round as long as he pays." Cassandra's cavalier attitude changes when she inspects the famous photographer's extraordinary series of "Yuleboys" (Jolasveinar), Nordic demons traced to the earliest religious beliefs in the area, the photographs priceless in a flourishing black market specializing in the esoterica of perversion. A growing discomfort shadows Cass's every move after viewing the images; as instinct inspires her impulsive flight to Iceland, headlines of brutal murders explode in Finland, the perfectly-ordered world of a genius shattered in a gruesome tableau of battered flesh.... Cass navigates the dystopian landscape of an economically-ravished Reykjavik, reconnecting with the elusive Quinn only to discover that murder has followed in a wake of violence, danger her traveling companion, evoking Neary's routinely confrontational response to threat.

Paralleling Neary's emotional state, Reykjavik exists in the absence of light, strewn with vacant buildings and desperate souls. Fleeing a murderer's pursuit, Cass collides with her secret past, enmeshed with Quinn in an unraveling confederacy of voyeurs, a pact of jaded collectors stalking the illuminated death. As in Generation Loss, Hand's sharp prose is as seductive and dreadful as the chemicals flooding Neary's veins, an inanimate camera's eye capturing the fleeting spark of life, the incandescent moment on the bridge between here and there, the ambiguity of perfection and decay. The depraved, the criminal, the indifferent and the mad roar in metal rock cacophony, Cass and Quinn forced into complicity. Provocative and unpredictable, Cass is compelling in her abandon, a heroine with the social sensitivity of ground glass, this time flying too close to the sun, a fate Cass intuits long before her flight to Finland: "The edge where I'd lived for all these years was starting to look like a precipice." Luan Gaines/2012. Read more ›

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Just like chocolate - the darker the better. March 11, 2012

By A. Still

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Let's get one thing straight up front. Liz Hand is not playing around. This is some dark stuff. How dark? Dark net; 14 hours of dark a day; dark, dangerous men; available dark. So dark that Cass Neary, a woman her creator describes as "your prototypical amoral speedfreak crankhead kleptomaniac murderous rage-filled alcoholic bisexual heavily tattooed American female photographer" is the brightest spot in the story. Dark.

People keep comparing this book to "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series, and I am here to just say no. "The Woman with the Jack Daniels and Focalin Addictions" series is far, far superior. Not only is Cass > Lisbeth by a hundred, Hand's prose is > Larsson's (or his translator's) by infinity. Hand is not just a great storyteller, she's an artist, and she brings her world alive in a way that rarely happens in "genre" fiction. The unique combination of setting, characters, and plot will have you checking the internet after you finish the novel to see what's real and what came out of Hand's head. You'll find yourself wondering how she could possibly know about all this crazy stuff, and how she can make up the fake stuff so convincingly. I don't know what to tell you. She's a genius, that's all, and these works are wholly original and without comparison to anything else.

And thus begins my love letter to Cass Neary, the most intriguing and female anti-heroine to grace the pages of a novel since the incorrigible Moll Flanders. Cass Neary is not afraid. Of anything. When Cass watches someone die, she doesn't flip out and book thrice weekly sessions with her therapist to work through the trauma. Cass takes a picture of the body, and a really beautiful picture, at that.... Knock Cass unconscious and throw her into the middle-of-ice-desert-nowhere, Cass doesn't wait for a hero to rescue her, and she certainly doesn't die. She staggers along, helped just a little by her BFF Jack and fave party girl Tina, until she stumbles onto a warm place to crash.

That Cass has survived as long as she has is a miracle, and a major part of her charm. Cass's theme song is "My Way," the Sid Vicious version. Through no fault or credit of her own, she's made it to middle-age, through punk rock, 1970s East Village, New York, a violent rape, and her own attempts to self destruct. (And no, that's not an error. Not only is she an insanely bad a$$ female protagonist that will eat you alive and pick her teeth with your bones, Cass is also middle- aged. Do you have any idea how incredible that is?!)

If you're coming to Available Dark a Cass Neary virgin, fine. The story is complete in and of itself, but just go ahead and read Generation Loss. Load up on Cass so you don't get the DTs, because you will not be able to get enough of her. She is addictive in the best way imaginable. Once you've got both books in hand, put your cowboy boots on and hunker down for a tumble through a frozen hell on the back of a strung out modern day Valkyrie with nothing left to lose. You won't regret it for a second, and you might even reach Valhalla. Just look out for Krampus and anyone pointing a camera your way. Read more ›