A Hoarse Half-Human Cheer

A medieval schoolmaster whose students stabbed him

to death with their pens---his name lives on in the College of Saint Cassian of Imola,

a school with spectacular troubles.  World War II has ended, and overnight  Saint

Cash’s has recklessly expanded from a dozen students to 4,500.  Unknown to the

honest clerics who think they run the place, the Newark Mafia find the college

a handy front for dealing in war surplus materials.   It’s a tough scene for a green kid

like apprentice mortician Moon Gogarty, even tougher for basketball coach

Douglas Knox, a priest with a drinking problem who receives mysterious threats

on his life.   And both Knox and Moon face a powerful temptation:  mobster mistress

Aisling Vastasi.

In this sinister comedy, the mob blackmails a pedophile priest in order to

take over his lucrative charity, The Children’s Crusade.  Events follow fast: a

car-bombing, a fiery holocaust, an exorcism that ends in terror, a raid on a brothel,

a college commencement that turns into a shoot-out, a play-off basketball game

in which rival gamblers have bribed both teams.

Alternately blood-curdling and hilarious, this is a gripping story full of

sudden twists.   Devotees of the thrillers of Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiassen, and

Janet Evanovich will find A Hoarse Half-human Cheer in the same league.

X. J. Kennedy’s  stories have appeared in Story Quarterly, Texas Review, Sunday newspaper supplements, Science Fiction Quarterly, and other magazines.  He has written several  books of verse, among them In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus: new & selected  poems (an American Library Association notable book), two  dozen children’s books, including a much praised novel The Owlstone Crown, and schoolbooks used by millions, including An Introduction to Fiction.   A Hoarse Half-human Cheer is his first novel for novel for adults.