Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Categories
Crime & mystery fiction

THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH

Ariel S. Winter

A first novel of stunning virtuosity and powerful emotional impact, THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH is the story of a damaged man and his fractured life, told in the form of three separate pulp crime novels - all bound in a single volume and each written in a style inspired by a different giant of the mystery genre: Georges Simenon, Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson.

Each of the novel's three parts is set in a different decade and written in the style of a different famous crime writer from the Twentieth Century. The result is an ingenious triptych - three first novels in one - that earns comparisons to the genre-bending work of authors such as Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, and Paul Auster. THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH is a hard-boiled and compelling crime novel about Shem Rozenkrantz, a flippant ex-pat American author who finds himself at the center of a murder investigation in a provincial French town when his wife's father, a convicted criminal, is suspected of orchestrating the killing of the local prison's escaped convicts. Over the course of the novel, Shem confronts a dark conspiracy that sees him bury a wife, a mistress, and, ultimately, a son. Ariel S. Winter graduated from The Johns Hopkins University in 2002. His short stories have appeared in various literary magazines, including Elle, The Urbanite and McSweeney's; and in 2008 he was a winner of the Free Press's "Who Can Save Us Now?" short story contest.

Available products
Book Published 2012-08-01 by Hard Case Crime

Comments

'The Twenty-Year Death' by Ariel S. Winter is 3-in-1 noir. The book is divided into three connected novels recalling Georges Simenon, Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson. He pulls it off. Read more...

What might seem at first like an amusing exercise for crime-fiction buffs becomes by the end immersive, exhilarating, and revelatory. Read more...

Ariel S. Winter's THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH has earned its way onto several highly-influential lists: - LA Times Holiday Gift Guide - The Drippler's top choice - The Spectator, UK - The Rap Sheet

Winter has created something more than a facile feat of literary ventriloquism. He has written a truly affecting and suspenseful triple treat that transcends the formal gimmick at its heart.

Writers who pay homage to their literary deities by imitating their idiosyncratic voices and distinctive styles usually end up looking like kids playing dress-up in their parents’ clothes. Which makes the stunt Ariel S. Winter pulls off in “The Twenty-Year Death” — three loosely linked but self- contained novels set in consecutive decades and written in the manner of Georges Simenon, Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson — all the more extraordinary. All three novels are beautifully built and sturdy enough to stand on their own. But there’s something seductive, even a little sinister, about Winter’s grand conceptual design of recurring faces and interlocking themes — like some glittering spider web that catches the eye of an admiring fly. Read more...