The Serialist

January 18, 2010
A seedy freelance writer provides the wry narrative voice for Gordon's winning debut, a darkly humorous thriller. New Yorker Harry Bloch, who once had lofty literary ambitions, has spent the past two decades as a hack, mostly as an advice columnist called the Slut Whisperer for Raunchy
magazine. Bloch also earns cash by doing homework for affluent private school students, a side business managed by a precocious teenage girl who was the first pupil he was paid to tutor. His boring life takes an unexpected turn after he receives a letter from death-row inmate Darian Clay (aka the Photo Killer), who, as a fan of the Slut Whisperer, thinks Bloch is right for the job of assisting him on his memoirs. In exchange for Clay revealing where he concealed the heads of his female victims, Bloch must seek out women who have written to Clay and write stories about their having sex with the serial killer. A number of plausible plot twists help shift the story from farce to whodunit.

February 15, 2010
A multilayered tale of a writer who's trying to make more than just a buck.

He's a man of many faces: T.R.L. Pangstrom, author of the Whoremasters of Zorg sci-fi/porn series; J. Duke Johnson, creator of inner-city private eye Mordechai Jones; and Sibylline Lorindo-Gold, the force behind the Crimson vampire series, beloved of goth bloggers coast to coast. Back home in Queens, though, he's just Harry Bloch, a hack writer who longs for some of the eminence his ex-girlfriend Jane's new husband has achieved as editor of Brooklyn literary journal The Torn Plaid Coat. Just when it looks as if Harry's career has skidded to the brink—he's reduced to forging term papers for brilliant, bored 15-year-old preppie Claire Hall—he gets a letter from serial killer Darian Clay, who knows Harry as Tom (The Slut Whisperer) Stanks from Raunchy magazine. Clay wants someone to ghost his memoirs—a potential gold mine, Claire sagely points out, and his ticket to the world of nonserial literature. So Harry confers with Clay's attorney, Carol Flosky, and next thing you know he's on a train upstate to meet the death-row inmate. But working with mass murderers is never easy, and pretty soon Harry is in deeper peril than his half-vampire heroine Sasha finds in the castle of Count Aram.

Not the best-wrought mystery in the world, but a tour de force debut that provides too much fun for readers to carp.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from February 15, 2010
Harry Bloch is a serialist in spades. He ekes out a living in Queens by writing pseudonymous series novels, all in the pulp style: the Zorg SF series by T. R. L. Pangstrom; the inner-city black Jew detective series by J. Duke Johnson; and the vampire series by Sybilline Lorindo-Gold, Blochs mothers full maiden name. In addition he tutors rich high-school kids by writing their term papers. Blochs big break comes from a serial killer on death row: 88 days before his execution, Darian Clay offers a chapter of his life story for each piece of pornography Bloch writes based on the torrid letters Clay has received in prison. Blochs visits to three letter-writing women have unexpected consequences, raising the possibility of a retrial for Clay; meanwhile, Bloch is suspected of murder and fears for his life. In his debut novel, Gordon sustains the action of an involved plot while sprinkling in chapters from each of Blochs three series and his own reflections on reading and writing, with an emphasis on the mystery genre. Seldom has a serial-killer story been as richly textured and laugh-out-loud funny as this one. Sure to be among the most unusual and appealing of this years debut thrillers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)