Bacon and Duct Tape, the debut novel from Adrianne Ash, is a larger-than-life tale that takes readers back to the pre-digital world of 1994. From the seedy clubs of post-Soviet Russia to the steamy jungles of Brazil, the epic story centers on an unnamed American city where the ubiquitous shadow of a fictional Irish Mafia pervades everyone's life. Colorful characters are gradually unveiled as events unfold, chronologically backwards. We meet the seductress Erin and her hapless would-be boyfriend Sean, the religious zealot Norma Johnson, the beautiful but cold-hearted lawyer Alannah, Russian sex-traffickers, a self-made drug kingpin named Crutch, and a homeless puppy. Teenage spies, body organ harvesters, mail order brides, drug dealers, sadistic thugs, and even a taxidermied polydactyl cat play major roles in this spectacle. Hovering over everything in this extraordinary realm is the eminence grise Marcas. The narrative never stops moving in unexpected directions as it lurches through cold violence, hot sex, and calculated business transactions. But as the pages turn, more and more of the back story is revealed until we finally learn - in shocking fashion - that no one in this tale is who they appear to be. Bacon and Duct Tape is a page-turner that will never stop astonishing you. The book dispenses a unique form of justice, punishing its characters for their many transgressions while entertaining readers in vivid, but somehow thought-provoking ways. This is pulp fiction for the intellectual - as sticky as duct tape, as enticing as bacon.
