Enter the Peerless

Elpenor, a newly minted private investigator, finds his first case on Craigslist: twenty-nine people have entered an abandoned trailer in rural Indiana, and none of them have left. Unable to open the trailer's doors or windows, Elpenor enlists two local accomplices, a knife grinder (Don the Knife) and a janitor (Hugh Gardener). When they finally gain access, they fall into a pocket universe ruled by a godlike being called Fiascoal. Refugees of this world—a depopulated and exact copy of our world—congregate around a web of communities in St. Louis. Elpenor attempts to find the missing people but is instead forced to become the new host of Fiascoal as a communal ritual. His search for the missing in the netherworld and the needs of the hungry, petulant god conflict as Don the Knife raises a cult of personality, community leaders abuse their authority, and Elpenor must decide whether to save the few over the many. That is, if he can find a way out of the metaphysical prison he's broken into. Told in a charged high-rhetorical, hard-boiled style, Enter the Peerless is a detective novel for the paranoiacs and heartsick rejects who know an angel in the dirt when they see one.