Curse the Names
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
One man sees an atomic apocalypse coming—and tries to warn the world—in this novel with “a sly, Hitchcockian touch”from an Edgar Award finalist (Publishers Weekly).
High on a mesa in the mountains of New Mexico, a small town hides a dreadful secret. On a morning very soon there will be an accident that triggers a terrible chain reaction, and the world we know will be wiped out.
James Oberhelm, a reporter at Los Alamos National Laboratory, already sees the devastation, like the skin torn off a moment that is yet to be. He believes he can prevent an apocalypse, but first James must escape the devices of a sensuous young blood tech, a lecherous old hippie, a predator in a waking nightmare, and a forsaken adobe house high away in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains whose dark history entwines them all.
A massive bomb is ticking beneath the sands of the Southwest, and time is running out to send a warning. James has to find a way to pass along the message—even if it ruins him.
“Arellano pulls off the not-inconsiderable feat of making the disintegration of his hero more compelling than the end of the world as we know it.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Reads like a top-notch thriller . . . Alternating between the hilarious and the dreamlike, the novel is imbued with the sense of foreboding inherent to Los Alamos’s infamous ‘gift’ to mankind.” —George Mastras, author of Fideli’s Way and writer/producer, Breaking Bad
“Nothing in New Mexico has ever been more secret than Los Alamos, the Atomic City, where a diverse group of geniuses built the first atomic bombs and changed the face of the world forever. That’s the setting and premise for this excellent novel by Cuban-American Robert Arellano. Disaster is about to happen and one man can avert it . . . maybe.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this unsettling mix of noir and paranormal obsession from Edgar-finalist Arellano (Havana Lunar), James Oberhelm, who writes banal feel-good pieces for the official publication of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and whose 10-year marriage has long since slipped into autopilot, accepts the invitation of an attractive young tech at the local blood bank to party with her and her goth friends at a remote abandoned house in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The girls never show, but soon after Oberhelm visits the strange old adobe house, he begins to have nightmares of an impending radioactive disaster. Suddenly, the "sackcloth-and-ashes people," the ascetic group of wandering burnouts who appear in Los Alamos around the anniversary of the atomic bomb detonation, don't seem quite so insane. Oberhelm's life quickly spins into a drug-fueled mess as he becomes consumed by his need to alert the world before it's too late. Arellano displays a sly, Hitchcockian touch.
