A Beast Without a Name: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan

Think you can’t buy a thrill? This book proves you wrong.

Katy lied.

Or did she?

As with the blues and Elvis and somebody else’s favorite song, it’s open to interpretation.

These twelve tales interpret shady pasts, dubious presents, and doomed futures. There’s no hiding inside a hall of rock and sand from stories as deliciously wicked and terrifically twisty as the jazz-rock noir that inspired them.

These masters of crime fiction heard the call and wrote it on the wall for you and me.

As they name the beast, they make alive worldly wonders in characters you’ve known for decades through the hypnotically woven tapestries of Steely Dan, destined to live on as indelibly as the hallucinatory memories in the caves of Altamira.

Edited by Brian Thornton with stories by Steve Brewer, W.H. Cameron, Reed Farrel Coleman, Libby Cudmore, Aaron Erickson, Naomi Hirahara, Matthew Quinn Martin, Richie Narvaez, Kat Richardson, Peter Spiegelman, Jim Thomsen, and Jim Winter.