Low Town
A novel
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Drug dealers, hustlers, brothels, dirty politics, corrupt cops . . . and sorcery. Welcome to Low Town.
In the forgotten back alleys and flophouses that lie in the shadows of Rigus, the finest city of the Thirteen Lands, you will find Low Town. It is an ugly place, and its champion is an ugly man. Disgraced intelligence agent. Forgotten war hero. Independent drug dealer. After a fall from grace five years ago, a man known as the Warden leads a life of crime, addicted to cheap violence and expensive drugs. Every day is a constant hustle to find new customers and protect his turf from low-life competition like Tancred the Harelip and Ling Chi, the enigmatic crime lord of the heathens.
The Warden’s life of drugged iniquity is shaken by his discovery of a murdered child down a dead-end street . . . setting him on a collision course with the life he left behind. As a former agent with Black House—the secret police—he knows better than anyone that murder in Low Town is an everyday thing, the kind of crime that doesn’t get investigated. To protect his home, he will take part in a dangerous game of deception between underworld bosses and the psychotic head of Black House, but the truth is far darker than he imagines. In Low Town, no one can be trusted.
Daniel Polansky has crafted a thrilling novel steeped in noir sensibilities and relentless action, and set in an original world of stunning imagination, leading to a gut-wrenching, unforeseeable conclusion. Low Town is an attention-grabbing debut that will leave readers riveted . . . and hungry for more.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Polansky hits all the right notes in his intelligent first novel, a blend of dystopian fantasy and hard-boiled crime. Rigus, one of the cities of the Thirteen Lands, is slowly rebuilding after war and plague have decimated the area's population. Fate has reduced the man known as the Warden, a former investigator for Black House, the Crown's secret police, to dealing pixie's breath and other narcotics. He lives on the edge of imminent demise, in conflict with other dealers and pursued by the law. When the Warden discovers a murdered child in the alley of a squalid Rigus slum called Low Town, he must rely on his old expertise to find the girl's killer. After a second and third child are slain, he realizes that it will take all of his guile and skill to survive the investigation, let alone discover what just might be an otherworldly predator at work. Sharp, noir-tinged dialogue and astute insights into class struggle mark Polansky as a writer with a future.
