Penny Dreadful [Hardcover]

Will Christopher Baer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 6, 2000

In this claustrophobic tale of urban despair and existential noir, ex-cop Phineas Poe-protagonist of Will Christopher Baer's first novel, Kiss Me, Judas-returns to Denver to find that reality has been rewritten and the laws of reason redrawn. When Phineas is asked by his old ally, Detective Moon, to find a missing officer named Jimmy Sky, he becomes an unwitting participant in a live role-playing game. Everyone he meets has multiple personalities, and Phineas himself soon loses track of his own various identities. Crossing the lines between traditional noir, fantasy, and edgy realism, Penny Dreadful shares sensibilities with everything from the books of William Gibson and Neal Gaiman to the films Trainspotting and The Matrix and the webgames Doom and Myst.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Fans of Will Christopher Baer's first novel, Kiss Me, Judas, have already met Phineas Poe: defrocked cop, former morphine addict, part-time psychotic, and a man who has lost his heart to a woman who left him in a tub full of ice, one kidney shy of the standard allotment. Poe knows a bad day when he sees one:

The thing is that my consciousness drifts and I have forgotten what I look like. I pass my reflection in a blackened window and I may not recognize myself. My reflection is perceived as a threat, an ugly twin. My reflection is a dark nonperson, a stranger on the street and this is not an identity crisis as I understand the phrase.

The bad days are back in Baer's second noir offering (and book two of his Poe trilogy), Penny Dreadful. Fresh from his surgical unpleasantness and eager to start a new life in Denver, Poe contacts a former colleague, Detective Moon, who shares with Poe the drunken admission that several handfuls of Denver's finest are missing. Among them is Moon's dearest friend, Detective Jimmy Sky.

When Poe agrees to look for Sky, things quantumly shift from bad to gross as he uncovers the gothish Game of Tongues, a freakishly cruel and narcotically fueled live action role-playing game (think Dungeons and Dragons in leather and chains), the object of which is to seek, suck, sever, and swallow the tongues of fellow players. Deaths ensue--imagine that!--and things spiral down from there.

Slim, existential, and darkly humorous, Penny Dreadful is a challenging (the point of view slides like Jackie Robinson, and if you prefer your dialogue with quotation marks you'd better bring your own) but beautiful train-wreck of a book that constantly dares the reader to look away. But if you don't look at the twisted metal, you'll never see the art. --Michael Hudson

From Publishers Weekly

In Baer's dark sequel to his first novel, Kiss Me, Judas, there is no moral yardstick, none of traditional noir's submerged longing for redemption, only a violent, Dungeons and Dragons-ish s&m hell. Phineas Poe, enervated, depressed and missing a kidney after misadventures in Texas, is hired by his old Denver police buddy, Moon, to find officer Jimmy Sky, who has vanished. Because neither Poe nor the reader is told of Sky's importance until he is finally located, the tale hangs not on suspense but on sensationalist gore. Poe descends into a twisted world of sadomasochistic goths playing the dangerous "game of tongues," an elaborate predatory pursuit where biting off one's victim's tongue increases the power of the biter within the hierarchical system of players. Incited by the narcotic "Pale," the mostly college-age participants frolic perilously in stygian alleys, assuming fantastic alter egos that eventually threaten their real identities. One player, "Chrome," instead of performing the bloody French kiss that is the game's currency, kills his victims --and that becomes police business. Poe, initiated into the game, resists its seduction, discovers the double lives of his old colleagues and eventually saves his girlfriend. Baer's language is hip, spare, brutal, sometimes gorgeous. Although there are some touching (albeit twisted) relationships, readers will have a hard time identifying with the deranged, damaged characters, since Baer withholds the truth about their lives until the end of the story. But once the game's main trick is revealed, the narrative loses steam. The payoff, however, is the voyeuristic glimpse the novel affords into the imaginary labyrinth inhabited by obsessive, nihilistic gothic gamers. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition edition (March 6, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670889202
• ISBN-13: 978-0670889204
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #305,110 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born 1966 in Mississippi. Lived in Montreal and Italy as a child. Graduated high school in Memphis, TN. Received MFA (1995) at Naropa U, Boulder, CO. Worked as taxi driver, journalist, and migrant college professor. Recently co-authored screenplay for Kiss Me, Judas, now in development with Mythic Films. Short stories have appeared in BOMB, nerve.com, the Cult, and elsewhere. Recent shorts include "Deception of the Thrush," SF Noir (Akashic), and "Fugitive Tendencies," postscript to the UK edition of The Contortionist's Handbook, (Harper-Collins UK). Status of much anticipated and long overdue fourth novel, the horror noir Godspeed, is unknown. WCB is married, two children. He currently teaches fiction and screenwriting at the Memphis College of Art.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Noir with a twist.... it's good!, March 30, 2000

By 

Brandon Taper - See all my reviews

This review is from: Penny Dreadful (Hardcover)

I have just recently finished reading the second in Baer's "Poe" trilogy, "Penny Dreadful" --- sequel to the amazingly prolific, "Kiss Me Judas". This novel however creates a world all its own. Baer is certainly a great talent, and his second novel's detail and plot are superb. One can picture the dark, gritty nights in Denver when Phineas Poe, (our anithero,) returns to find himself losing his identity -- or what has become of his identity -- more and more each day. He becomes lost in a "Game of Tongues"...which ceases to blow my mind when I remember how rich in noir detail the "horrific" game was described. (I won't give anything away, especially of the game's nature, I despise reviewers who do this.)

All in all, Baer has great insight when it comes to the mundane, unoriginal surroundings we find ourselves in everyday. Whether it be his describing a homeless man on the street corner, with his nose bloodied, his fingernails bitten to the ends or his describing the dark, dank Denver alleys, he does it well. This novel is filled with everything a reader can long for. Baer pulls off noir with his own sense of style, and he does it with passion.

Writing at its best.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars dark, mesmerizing, genuinely creepy, October 10, 2003

By 

David Batcher (Minneapolis, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Penny Dreadful (Paperback)

Amid the slick writing, the grimly fascinating characters, plots, and setpieces, it's easy to miss the literary intelligence that's at work here. Baer gives us not only an addictive mystery-thriller, which is genuinely creepy and disturbing, but also a submerged meditation on the slipperiness of identity. There's even some well-placed commentary on _Ulysses_ here. Baer's vision ain't pretty, but it's compelling, and I think he's one to watch.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Atmospheric Amazing, May 7, 2001

By 

Bob Fisher (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Penny Dreadful (Paperback)

Enigmatic and sublime. This stark noirish nightmare is as good as they get. Baer makes what almost could be called a surrealist hardboiled novel. Without lossing control of the narrative, Baer does a superb job crossing the border between naturalist crime writing and heady phantasmagoria. Phineas Poe is one of the most interesting, beguiling anti-heros within the noir genre, a tight lipped drugged out sam spade caught up in a underground world of would be vampires.