Devil and the Detective

John Goldbach: John Goldbach is the author of Selected Blackouts, a collection of stories. He lives in Montreal.

'When John Goldbach told me he had some noir he'd like me to see I told him I could sure use some decent noir, send it, and he did, and it is. Except it isn't really of course noir. It's noirtire, or satoir, where the fun is not in Take This Seriously but in the goofy edges of the detective. This detective has good goofy edges and I expect them to get goofier and better over time. Mr. Goldbach will be a fun writer to watch. Check him out." - Padgett Powell "The world has hitherto been divided into plotters who wrote in shoddy sentences and linguistic aesthetes who wrote beautiful sentences but couldn't make anything happen on the page, no plot. Goldbach manages to do both -- a thrilling plot and beautiful language. He has raised the bar for both murder mysteries and literary writing." - Josip Novakovich "John Goldbach's first novel is an out-and-out romp, though a cerebral and extremely clever one ... Goldbach's prose is polished and inventive, and the book is at once a clever satire and satisfying bit of strangeness." - Globe and Mail