By Tamas Dobozy
This detective novel — presented in three distinct novellas — traces the ever-deepening involvement of the protagonist Anthony de Stasio in a series of political nightmares, from a cursed firearm in “Steyr Mannlicher” that leads him through the world of a single mother’s hardscrabble poverty; to the tormented life of a daughter imprisoned in a world her father built for her in “Photo Array”; to the workings of a mysterious postwar utopian cult that traffics street kids in an attempt to engineer a universal refusal of the vote in “The Unaffiliated.” Each novella deepens Stasio’s immersion in the charnel house of contemporary politics, and features a supporting cast of characters whose personal involvement attempts to rescue him from it.
PRAISE FOR STASIO:
“Stasio is an exercise in noir fiction with the intellectual depth we expect from our best writers … consistently off-beat, unsettling, and superbly written.”
— Vincent Czyz, the arts fuse (Boston)
“It’s a glorious fever dream of a novel, resolutely dark but with a striking streak of humour running through it. … Stasio is a dizzying, compelling novel, a worthy addition to Dobozy’s already impressive oeuvre.”
— Robert Wiersema, Quill & Quire
“Dobozy’s take on the detective mystery format is heightened beyond the occasionally tired and predictable standard of the genre via his unique prose style … and his willingness to incorporate elements of humour … and borderline surrealism.”
— Logan Macnair, The BC Review
“This paranoid detective story investigates characters with the initials TD who once owned a beautifully ornate Russian gun, an ominous weapon that may have a mind of its own. Tamas Dobozy, also TD, but not to be confused with his characters Tetyana Dedov, Trofim Dmitriyev, or Todd D’Cunto, is expert at creating suspense and strange humour in the exact same moments. Stasio’s story possesses a weird magic, weighted by old world history, yet surging like lava.”
— Mark Anthony Jarman, author of Burn Man: Selected Stories
Tamas Dobozy is a professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University; lives in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada; and has published four books of short fiction, When X Equals Marylou, Last Notes and Other Stories, Siege 13: Stories (winner of the 2012 Rogers Writers Trust of Canada Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for both the Governor General’s Award: Fiction, and the 2013 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award), and most recently, Ghost Geographies: Fictions. Tamas has published over seventy short stories in journals such as One Story, Fiction, Agni, and Granta, and won an O Henry Prize in 2011, and the Gold Medal for Fiction at the National Magazine Awards in 2014.
