Those Murderous Macbeths

Those Murderous Macbeths is a big, entertaining, contemporary novel that takes up space from the wide-open rolling hills of Idaho to the cloistered manses of Nantucket Island.

The Macbeths are the stars of the show. A crazy (literally), competitive, ambitious lot they are, and riddled with a wide array of psychological euphorias ranging from obsessive compulsive disorder to megalomania.

Present in our narrative, of course, are weddings, births, and deaths. The Big Three. Plus there are feuds galore and murders many, war and peace and no end of family love, harmony, hate, and distrust.

Money (what else?) causes no end of problems from way back when right up until the present day. It might even be said, if we took money out of the mix, that these Macbeths are actually a tight-knit clan with blood proving thicker than water. But this is America, after all, and so money is an essential ingredient in our narrative soup, and we all know the Almighty Greenback thins blood into a Niagara of want, greed, and deception.

The set-up for Those Murderous Macbeths is deliciously simple—a wedding invitation. Young Dane Macbeth wants to marry his penniless sweetie Ms. Melissa Brant at the First Congregational Church of Nantucket. No problem, right? A lovely young couple deeply in love wants to wed. Who could possibly object to such a celebration? 

Well, the invitations go out, and lickity-split, you got it, all hell breaks loose.

The present-day narrative unfolds over just a few glorious summer days before, during, and after the wedding. But much of the novel unfurls in family flashbacks weeks, months, years, even generations in the past. It’s all leading up to the reception at the Nantucket Yacht Club and the bloody, murderous mess that will shortly thereafter ensue.

Those Murderous Macbeths is a colossal contemporary American novel—Big Characters, Big Themes, A Plot as Thick as Stew, Layer upon Layer of Subplot, A Rampaging Narrative laden with Slippery Language, and no end of Twists, Turns and Unpredictability.

Like Simpson’s literary masterwork, This Way Madness Lies, penned nearly a quarter of a century ago, Those Murderous Macbeths captures in its web the angst, the dread, and the sheer folly of the Modern American Family. 

A consummate feast for lovers of big, bold, expressive fiction.