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The Terror of Living
A Novel
Description
Phil Hunt is in deep trouble.
Hunt is on the run from two men: Drake, the deputy sheriff who intends to catch him, and Grady, the vicious hitman who means to kill him.
For twenty years Hunt has lived in Washington State, raising horses with his wife on his small farm. He’s tried to stay out of trouble, wanting only to make a living and taking the occasional illicit job in order to do so.
Then his last delivery goes horribly wrong, and the chase is on from the mountains down into the Puget lowlands. To have any chance of rescuing his quiet life, Hunt will have to deal with deputy sheriff Bobby Drake, a good man determined to make up for his father’s tainted legacy and Grady Fisher, a very bad man intent on making a name for himself in the most violent ways. With a fondness for blood, Grady takes pleasure in the use of knives, taking Hunt’s life apart piece by piece, all the while leaving a trail of victims across the state.
Relentless and gorgeously written, with original characters and a vividly powerful sense of place, The Terror of Living heralds the arrival of a writer who will be compared with the great suspense novelists.
Hunt is on the run from two men: Drake, the deputy sheriff who intends to catch him, and Grady, the vicious hitman who means to kill him.
For twenty years Hunt has lived in Washington State, raising horses with his wife on his small farm. He’s tried to stay out of trouble, wanting only to make a living and taking the occasional illicit job in order to do so.
Then his last delivery goes horribly wrong, and the chase is on from the mountains down into the Puget lowlands. To have any chance of rescuing his quiet life, Hunt will have to deal with deputy sheriff Bobby Drake, a good man determined to make up for his father’s tainted legacy and Grady Fisher, a very bad man intent on making a name for himself in the most violent ways. With a fondness for blood, Grady takes pleasure in the use of knives, taking Hunt’s life apart piece by piece, all the while leaving a trail of victims across the state.
Relentless and gorgeously written, with original characters and a vividly powerful sense of place, The Terror of Living heralds the arrival of a writer who will be compared with the great suspense novelists.
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Praise
"The Terror of Living opens with gentle beauty, calm before a bloody storm, before building intensity with swift, jarring, and confident storytelling power. A fine debut from a writer of obvious and substantial talents. Readers--including this one--will certainly be following Urban Waite for years to come."
—Michael Koryta, author of So Cold the River
"In the tradition of No Country for Old Men, Urban Waite has written a nail-biter that takes off from the get-go and never stops, a book chock full of memorable characters and kick-ass writing. Clear your calendar before reading this one, folks, because once you start there's no stopping until the end, which arrived much too quickly for this reader. A smashing debut."
—Tom Franklin, author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
"A supercharged suspenseful thriller peopled by colorful characters and driven by terrifying events that begin at mach speed and never slow for a moment. Supremely cinematic."
—Joseph Wambaugh, author of the Hollywood Station novels
"Urban Waite is a writer who knows what he's doing and this killer novel drives that home every hard-charging step of the way. In Waite's hands, scenes come at you like bursts of machine gun fire, and it's testament to his skill - setting that pops off the page, dialogue that crackles, characters you can't help but care about - that you won't want them to stop hitting."
—Josh Weil, author of The New Valley
"The Terror of Living is a smart, swiftly-paced and bloody Western for our moment. Urban Waite is a writer who won't let a reader wander away--he keeps you reading, and reading, and rewards all your attention with a powerhouse story and prose to match."
—Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter's Bone and The Bayou Trilogy
"A hell of a good novel, relentlessly paced and beautifully narrated. There's just no let-up. An auspicious debut."
—Stephen King
"[A] superbly written chase novel set in Washington State.... A cat-and-mouse pursuit, gut-clenching violence (fair warning, the book cannot make the claim, "no horses were harmed in the making of this story"), loyalties sundered -- all come with the genre. What is rarer is the finely honed literary sensibility of the writer, who conveys the sensory reality of his settings with evocative exactitude.... Waite's considerable talent in general serves him well."
—P.G. Koch, The Houston Chronicle
"This formidable fiction debut by Urban Waite unfolds in short and often all too memorably violent sequences, yet the author also allows his characters room to wrestle with private demons as the intense, often gruesome tale races toward its satisfying resolution."
—Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal