Best known for his superlative award-winning writing in the horror field, Conrad Williams now showboats his sparkling talent in his debut crime novel, the first in a series to feature Joel Sorrell, a rough diamond private investigator, with a talent for tracking down missing persons. His own daughter disappeared five years earlier following his wife's death, and he is still haunted by the case. A mysterious woman begs for his help in finding her missing brother, then herself disappears; an evil serial killer is loose and those in Joel's orbit are being sucked into the wake as he intuits that the whole affair is becoming dangerously personal. Fast moving and with a strong underlying sense of dread and anxiety, this is noir at its most gripping (DISCLAIMER: I was the novel's editor when it initially appeared in a different version as BLONDE ON A STICK). ~ Maxim Jakubowski
Dust and Desire (A Joel Sorrell Thriller) Synopsis
AN EXTRAORDINARY KILLER HAS ARRIVED IN LONDON, HELL-BENT ON DESTRUCTIONJoel Sorrell, a bruised, bad-mouthed PI, is a sucker for missing person cases. And not just because he's searching for his daughter, who vanished five years after his wife was murdered. Joel feels a kinship with the desperate and the damned. He feels, somehow, responsible. So when the mysterious Kara Geenan begs him to find her missing brother, Joel agrees. Then an attempt is made on his life, and Kara vanishes...A vicious serial killer is on the hunt, and as those close to Joel are sucked into his nightmare, he suspects that answers may lie in his own hellish past.
'Williams is so good at what he does that he probably shouldn't be allowed to do it anymore, for the sake of everyone's sanity.' Publishers Weekly (starred review).
Author
About Conrad Williams
Conrad Wiilliams is the author of seven novels, four novellas and a collection of short stories. One was the winner of the August Derleth award for Best Novel (British Fantasy Awards 2010), while The Unblemished won the International Horror Guild Award for Best Novel in 2007 (he beat the shortlisted Stephen King on both occasions). He won the British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer in 1993, and another British Fantasy Award for Best Novella.
