Product Description
OUTCASTS - A PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR NOVEL
My name is Declan Shea.
I never thought I was monster. You have to believe me when I say that. I had a normal life. I was in love with a beautiful girl, Aimee. We’d just bought a great apartment in the Theatre Village we could barely afford and I was working impossible hours trying to make ends meet, but I loved every minute of it. This was my life.
It changed overnight. I was driving home from a gig when a tramp stepped out in front of my car. I killed him. I know I did. But no-one believed me. The medical staff at the hospital insisted he was the result of some sort of hallucination because of the trauma sustained during the accident. I tried to convince them otherwise, but the more I protested, the more obvious it became to them that I had damaged more than just my ribs in the crash, so I started to lie to keep them happy. I pretended he wasn't there. I pretended that I hadn’t woken up to find him sitting at the bottom of the bed eating my meal. But he was. He was everywhere.
His name was Crohak, king of the tramps. He ruled the streets.
And he was determined to destroy my life and take away everything I loved in revenge.
Ask yourself this: how do you fight a monster no-one else can see?
That is what he reduced my life to. I stopped being Declan Shea that night. I stopped being a jazz pianist and became someone else entirely. I became a monster.
Outcasts was International Bestselling author Steven Savile's debut novel. It chronicles the birth of a serial killer in a very dark, all too real, Newcastle of the 1990s. It is a document humane charting the descent of an ordinary man into a murky underworld of very human monsters, grief and madness as he wrestles to come to terms with who he is and just what he is capable of in the name of love.
It isn't pleasant. It isn't comfortable. It plumbs the very darkest regions of our psyche.
Previously published in the US, Sweden and recently sold to Germany, under the title Laughing Boy's Shadow.
"A raw, gritty novel: part social commentary, part philosophy, part fantasy. Savile handles his episodes of graphic violence skillfully, eschewing clichés and shock tactics in favor of understated, detached narration, and the result is a genuinely chilling portrait of total alienation. Savile's novel is original, smart, and well-written; his disturbing images and bleak prose and both thought-provoking and genuinely unsettling." -- Rue Morgue Magazine
"The tale is compelling. The protagonist Declan Shea’s transformational journey through the underground; his confrontation with the marvellously named Crohak and the Rookery; the iconic imagery cheerfully interwoven with allusions cribbed from L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll and Joseph Campbell make for a dark intriguing sojourn through a mythic urban landscape of bewildering wonderment." -- Fear Zone
My name is Declan Shea.
I never thought I was monster. You have to believe me when I say that. I had a normal life. I was in love with a beautiful girl, Aimee. We’d just bought a great apartment in the Theatre Village we could barely afford and I was working impossible hours trying to make ends meet, but I loved every minute of it. This was my life.
It changed overnight. I was driving home from a gig when a tramp stepped out in front of my car. I killed him. I know I did. But no-one believed me. The medical staff at the hospital insisted he was the result of some sort of hallucination because of the trauma sustained during the accident. I tried to convince them otherwise, but the more I protested, the more obvious it became to them that I had damaged more than just my ribs in the crash, so I started to lie to keep them happy. I pretended he wasn't there. I pretended that I hadn’t woken up to find him sitting at the bottom of the bed eating my meal. But he was. He was everywhere.
His name was Crohak, king of the tramps. He ruled the streets.
And he was determined to destroy my life and take away everything I loved in revenge.
Ask yourself this: how do you fight a monster no-one else can see?
That is what he reduced my life to. I stopped being Declan Shea that night. I stopped being a jazz pianist and became someone else entirely. I became a monster.
Outcasts was International Bestselling author Steven Savile's debut novel. It chronicles the birth of a serial killer in a very dark, all too real, Newcastle of the 1990s. It is a document humane charting the descent of an ordinary man into a murky underworld of very human monsters, grief and madness as he wrestles to come to terms with who he is and just what he is capable of in the name of love.
It isn't pleasant. It isn't comfortable. It plumbs the very darkest regions of our psyche.
Previously published in the US, Sweden and recently sold to Germany, under the title Laughing Boy's Shadow.
"A raw, gritty novel: part social commentary, part philosophy, part fantasy. Savile handles his episodes of graphic violence skillfully, eschewing clichés and shock tactics in favor of understated, detached narration, and the result is a genuinely chilling portrait of total alienation. Savile's novel is original, smart, and well-written; his disturbing images and bleak prose and both thought-provoking and genuinely unsettling." -- Rue Morgue Magazine
"The tale is compelling. The protagonist Declan Shea’s transformational journey through the underground; his confrontation with the marvellously named Crohak and the Rookery; the iconic imagery cheerfully interwoven with allusions cribbed from L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll and Joseph Campbell make for a dark intriguing sojourn through a mythic urban landscape of bewildering wonderment." -- Fear Zone
