Böcker av Peter Plate

"California is on fire. Everyone has the virus. Sinister patrols of SWAT teams seem to materialize out of thin air, and if you're not careful, you'll end up exiled down in Bakersfield. In the middle of it all, the fourteen-year-old narrator in Night of the Short Eyes must take care of his mess of a family--Dad is in jail for stealing guns with his partner, Ronnie, and Mom is shacking up with the social worker assigned to the family's case--and he only has one thing to his advantage: he speaks perfect English. Refugees from Russia stream into San Francisco as our narrator approaches his next birthday. His younger brother (nicknamed Putin, "on account of his broken English and heavy accent.") seems determined to make trouble if he cannot find it himself. Which shouldn't be hard when even crossing the street is a walk on the dangerous side. In this world of worsening climate disasters, and set against the backdrop of a cold war that never ended, Night of the Short Eyes may be former San Francisco Literary Laureate Peter Plate's most outrageous novel yet. Written with lyrical grace and propulsive momentum, Plate's latest vision of California is so warped that it just might come to pass"--

It's Christmastime in the Southland in this near-future vision of 21st century California. Our narrators, an ex-con turned pistol-carrying priest, and Sugar Child, a halfway house resident, have just met. The priest is a donations solicitor for Blessed World, the church and charity, and works downtown, "where I bang a tambourine and beg for money in the mellifluous, singsong voice beloved by children worldwide: Help the needy, give to the poor, amen." But nothing is going right. Hassled by SWAT cops, and troubled after a failed marriage, he's losing faith in himself. Sugar Child has her own problems. She's arrested by SWAT police, and sent to "lockdown." Her opinion of the priest is no better: She's never met a man who was stronger than a woman. Looking at him, she never will.As the days speed toward Christmas-holiday shoppers aren't giving him any money-the priest wonders whether there isn't some new mission awaiting him, one that'll help the people in the street, or perhaps one that will lead to his imprisonment. And as he bangs on his tambourine it becomes clear that the one thing he wants most is to take Sugar Child to the "promised land," because what would Christmas be this year without an act of freedom.A novel that is also a psychic history in a time of attrition, With Death Laughing is a utopian crime story where the line between thievery and charity all but disappears.