Pomona Queen Book

Before a virus killed the orange trees, before cheap housing ate up the land, Pomona was a pretty small town; now it is part of the same urban nightmare as everywhere else. Notional owner of the last orange grove, vacuum cleaner salesman Earl constantly harks back to the glory days of his murdered grandfather and to his own good time as singer in a small local band, with the doomed mad woman that he loved and lost. Someone else remembers him as Johnny Magic, though--when he knocks on the wrong door and walks in on local biker psycho Dan Brown's wake for his brother, Earl finds himself recruited first as singer at the wake and then as avenger. There is never any chance that Earl will kill the wild child singer of a local women's band just because Dan tells him, but there is the question of whether he can defy him, and live... This is a powerful short novel of regrets and sudden violent action, of confusion and anger and tenderness; Kem Nunn brings to contemporary noir a sensibility that combines a strong sense of the past and of place with a passion for righteousness that has real authority. --Roz KaveneyRead More