Noir Lord

Heard of the drug Lingo? Oh, boy, are you missing out. It’ll get you higher than Amy Winehouse while simultaneously ramping up your verbal IQ.

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More About

• Dashiell Hammett
• Amy Winehouse
• James Ellroy
• William Gibson

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As with any designer drug, there are a few problems. There’s the homicidal-rage side effect, plus you may need to deal with a female police detective addicted to speed and rough sex. Also, it’s only available in a fictional New England rust-belt metropolis called Quinsigamond, the setting for Jack O’Connell’s five underworld novels, including the Lingo-literate Box Nine. (Writer James Ellroy hailed that book as “hyper-real noir,” admiring how it “chronicles a grotesque romance about genocide, language, bibliomania, doubt, obsession, worms, epidermis, and sanctuary!”)

O’Connell makes his first-ever visit to the Valley to read from his new novel, The Resurrectionist. The author, often referred to as the “cyberpunk Dashiell Hammett,” says, “How could I not be delighted with such a tag, as Hammett was certainly an early influence? And I was a great fan of cyberpunk in its 1980s heyday – William Gibson’s Neuromancer knocked me over when I first read it.” About The Resurrectionist, O’Connell adds, “I hope the reader finds it a straight-up ripping yarn – a thriller, a suspenser, an edge-of-the-seat page-turner.”