Stokoe's first mainstream crime-fiction novel will shock and awe.
Click here to view Matthew Stokoe's novel High Life.
Click here to view Matthew Stokoe's forthcoming novel Cows.
Empty Mile has received a *starred* review in Publishers Weekly:
"From the outset of this heartbreakingly powerful contemporary noir, Stokoe (High Life) gets the reader deeply emotionally invested in his
guilt-ridden narrator, Johnny Richardson. Eight years after leaving his hometown of Oakridge, Calif., in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada
mountains, Johnny returns to face the consequences of a reckless youthful act. Instead of keeping an eye on his then 11-year-old brother, Stan,
during an outing to a local lake, Johnny slipped off with his girlfriend, Marla, into the surrounding woods. Left alone, Stan, a smart kid but a
poor swimmer, suffered brain damage after nearly drowning in the lake. In the present, Johnny and Marla reconnect, but a suicide prompted by sexual
betrayal leads to more deaths. When Stan and Johnny's widowed father disappears, Johnny must look after his brother on his own. Stokoe stays
true to a bleak vision of the world as he enmeshes his characters in the kinds of tragic setups reminiscent of a Thomas Hardy novel."
"Dark and disturbing, yet highly captivating, Matthew Stokoe's novel EMPTY MILE is proof of the human heart's complexity. [É] Deeply riveting and packed with villainous characters that make Satan look like the Easter Bunny, EMPTY MILE is a novel that you just can't miss."
--Sacramento News and Reviews
"I know it's only August, but Matthew Stokoe's EMPTY MILE is a contender for my crime novel of the year. This book has everything a good crime novel should: a suspenseful story with violence at its core, characters driven by lust, love and guilt, propelled with prose that's poetic and profound. [É] Stokoe brilliantly mines what happens to a person when shame and guilt fester."
--Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
"Danger permeates this expertly plotted story from start to finish [É] with a 21st-century-California setting but dialogue that could have been spoken by Bogart (as well as the occasional purple simile ˆ la Raymond Chandler), Empty Mile [É] reaffirms basic knowledge of good and evil and how action alters destiny. Johnny [the protagonist] is typical only to a certain point. Once enmeshed in the plot's relentless coils, he enters another dimension-one in which good people don't stay good for very long."
--Washington City Paper
"Beautifully written and deeply gripping, Empty Mile is a great read. I'm already looking forward to the next one from Matthew Stokoe."
--Michael Connelly, author of Nine Dragons
"Matthew Stokoe's Empty Mile exemplifies everything that makes good noir so gut-strumming. Surprising, edgy, dangerous, nihilistic, and totally bad-ass."
--Tom Piccirilli, author of Shadow Season
"The tension builds unbearably in this magnificent 'Sierras Noir' novel. Stokoe writes damaged people worthy of James M. Cain and Jim Thompson. His star-crossed lovers and broken families will steal your heart, even as Stokoe drives the knife home. I couldn't stop reading."
--Denise Hamilton, author of the best-selling Eve Diamond series
"No point in turning up the 'brightness' on your set. Empty Mile is a failed-brakes careen of guilt and payback, a Lynchian labyrinth of obsession, secrets, and revenge in small-town America."
--Janet Fitch, author of Paint It Black
"Like the best noir, Empty Mile is rife with desire, desperation, and despair. Matthew Stokoe's people have dubious motives, ugly secrets, crushing guilt, and suffer dire consequences. But they're redeemed by the rarest gold in contemporary crime fiction--an author's genuine empathy."
--Eddie Muller, author of Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir
When Johnny Richardson comes home to the town of Oakridge he has one thing on his mind--putting right a terrible mistake he made eight years ago. Revisiting the past, though, is a dark and dangerous game in small town America. When a careless sexual episode leads to the suicide of the town's first lady, Johnny finds himself the target of a revenge campaign that threatens to tear apart the fragile world he's built with his brain-damaged brother and depressive girlfriend among the gold-bearing mountains of Northern California.
Left an unexplained piece of land when his father mysteriously disappears, Johnny must unravel its secrets in a desperate bid to protect those he loves. His efforts to do this, though, have deadly consequences and will ultimately force him to confront not only his own failings, but the very nature of guilt itself.
A searing meditation on the futility of trying to right the wrongs of the past, Empty Mile blends elements of thrilling urban noir with the wide open spaces of outdoor adventure in a story that reflects America's contemporary uncertainty about itself.
Matthew Stokoe was born in England and grew up in Australia. Since then, he has lived in a number of places in between and presently divides his time between Sydney and Northern California. He is the author of the groundbreaking novels Cows and High Life, and is internationally regarded as one of the most daring and innovative writers working today.
