Liquid Snakes

A Novel

by Stephen Kearse

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Pub Date Aug 08 2023 | Archive Date Jul 28 2023

Catapult, Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press | Soft Skull

Mystery & Thrillers

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Description

What if toxic pollutants traveled up the socioeconomic ladder rather than down it? A Black biochemist provides an answer in this wildly original novel of pollution, poison, and dark pleasure

In Atlanta, Kenny Bomar is a biochemist-turned-coffee-shop-owner in denial about his divorce and grieving his stillborn daughter. Chemicals killed their child, leaching from a type of plant the government is hiding in Black neighborhoods. Kenny’s coping mechanisms are likewise chemical and becoming more baroque—from daily injections of lethal snake venom to manufacturing designer drugs. As his grief turns corrosive, it taints every person he touches.

Black epidemiologists Retta and Ebonee are called to the scene when a mysterious black substance is found to have killed a high school girl. Investigating these “blackouts” sends the women down separate paths of blame and retribution as two seemingly disparate narratives converge in a cinematic conclusion.

Liquid Snakes is an immersive, white-knuckle ride with the spookiness of speculative fiction and the propulsion of binge-worthy shows like FX’s Atlanta and HBO’s Random Acts of Flyness. Transfiguring a whodunit plot into a labyrinthine reinterpretation of a crime procedural, Stephen Kearse offers an uncanny commentary on an alternative world, poisoned.

Advance Praise

“Stephen Kearse is a fearless writer who has created an endlessly entertaining cast of characters. Liquid Snakes sits at the timely and unsettling intersection between public health and crime, and I was furious that it had to come to an end.”

—Kashana Cauley, author of The Survivalists

“What if the communities poisoned by Big Chem turned their enemy into a weapon, wielding molecular magic for revenge—and maybe also liberation? Kearse takes this clever premise and, with his distinctive style and low-key humor, crafts a story that will grab hold of your brain and blow it to bits. Like nothing else I've read, in the best possible way.”

—Nicola Twilley, co-host of Gastropod and co-author of Until Proven Safe: The History & Future of Quarantine

“Who poisons who in Stephen Kearse’s inspired Liquid Snakes? A slippery, satirical, quick-witted trip through the lives of misfits forced to find the line between clarity and revenge, annihilation and release—frequently hilarious, unexpectedly tender, and resolutely of our time.”

—Geoff Manaugh, New York Times-bestselling author of A Burglar’s Guide to the City and Executive Producer of We Have A Ghost

“Restless, searching, and totally gripping. Kearse has written a brilliant novel that manages to be, among other things, a pharmacological thriller and an incisive meditation on the poison-pen letter.”

—Hannah Gold, critic and author