- Publisher : Small Beer Press (August 23, 2022)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1618732013
- ISBN-13 : 978-1618732019
- Item Weight : 14.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches
In 1888 in Victoria, Texas, for a simple job, a Chicago private eye gets caught up in the poker game to end all poker games.
Shannon, a Chicago private detective, returns home to Galveston, Texas for a wedding. Galveston’s new rabbi asks Shannon to find Nathan Silverberg, gone missing along with a group of swindlers who claim to be soliciting money for a future colony of Romanian Jewish refugees.
What seems to be a simple job soon pushes Shannon into stranger territory. His investigations lead him to a malevolent white-haired gambler, monstrous sand dune totems, and a group of skull-headed poker players trapped in an endless loop of cards and alcohol, who may be his only means to survive the business.
With The Silverberg Business, Robert Freeman Wexler has delivered a gloriously strange hard-boiled tale that crosses genres and defies expectations.
Review
"Steeped in the early history of Texas’s statehood and laced with eerie portents of supernatural horror. . . . Wexler keeps his twisty plot refreshingly unpredictable and endows his characters—even the non-talking skullheads—with vividly realized personalities that enliven his surreal, atmospheric tale. This weird western packs a wallop."— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A weird but oddly convincing creature feature."—Kirkus Reviews
Early reader reactions
"Certainly the strangest book I've ever read, and strangeness is a thing that I take to. The grotesque horrors, the impossibilities, the shifting scenes, Silverberg's skull, the skull-heads, the wooden house that turns into a mansion without the detective finding it particularly odd. It is in fact a book not like anything I've ever read."
— John Crowley, author of Little, Big
“A haunting novel that traverses an American West inhabited by nightmarish characters, human and otherwise, The Silverberg Business evokes the unease of classic weird fiction with a contemporary gloss: William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land by way of Jim Jarmusch and Cormac McCarthy. Unnerving and unforgettable.” — Elizabeth Hand, author of Hokuloa Road
"Robert Freeman Wexler never fails to knock me out, and The Silverberg Business hits like a hurricane—there’s strangeness and beauty on every page. The novel is that rare thing, a weird western that’s truly weird, set in a Texas that’s simultaneously gritty, violent, and real, yet soaked in myth. Don’t miss this.” — Daryl Gregory, author of Revelator
"This philosophical Jewish-Texan retro-neo-noir—at once detective story, western, and ambling picaresque—is populated by a memorable cast of schemers, toughs, and oddballs, and rendered with a keen eye and ear for detail." — J. Robert Lennon, author of Subdivision
Praise for Robert Wexler’s books
"An unusual, haunting tale from a distinctive new voice." — Lisa Tuttle, London Sunday Times
"This complex, enthralling novel is concerned with relations between art and commerce, and nature and commerce; the importance of the past; the everyday oppression of capitalism; and how art may shape history." — Booklist (starred review)
"As buoyant and airy as a center-ring trapeze act." — Publisher's Weekly
"Quietly stunning." — Asimov's
"Wexler demonstrates a wonderful touch with his writing: to render Lewis's lengthy inner journey through this dream-state without losing a sense of living, vital immediacy is an extraordinary accomplishment."—New York Review of Science Fiction
"A fascinating, deeply bizarre adventure."—Faren Miller, Locus
About the Author
Robert Freeman Wexler’s books include the novels The Painting and the City and Circus of the Grand Design and a collection, Undiscovered Territories. His stories have appeared in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Postscripts, The Third Alternative, Electric Velocipede, and Polyphony. He lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio with the writer Rebecca Kuder. His website and blog can be found here: robertfreemanwexler.com.
