Street Raised

The following comes to us from Pearce Hansen, the writer of STREET RAISED. After reading an interview with Pearce and a summery of the book, I knew this was something worth telling people about. Check it out.


STREET RAISED has been re-released for the Kindle and is available for $2.99 at:

AMAZON



“When Speedy raises from prison, he hitchhikes home to Oakland only to find his brother Little Willy a homeless crack head and his best friend Fat Bob bouncing in San Francisco's underground hardcore clubs. When two of their childhood homeboys get wrapped in chains by Mexican slangers and thrown in the American River alive, our heroes somehow get it together enough to plot revenge.”



“Sure, it maybe takes the edge off Speedy's game a little when he starts playing house with beautiful phone psychic Carmel, and it complicates things a bit more when Louis, the same cop who put him in prison, starts dogging their steps like an unwelcome relative. But when a racist coven of skinz comes howling for Speedy & Carmel's blood, and a serial killer with a monster in his head decides Speedy is the answer to all his unholy prayers, things get really interesting . . .”



Ken Bruen (author of LONDON BOULEVARD, soon to be a major motion picture, Oscar winner William Monahan (screenwriter of The Departed) to write & direct): "One of the best writers I know. Imagine James Ellroy coupled with GR Martin and overseen by Willeford. But Pearce really needs no comparison to any other writer; he’s created his own compelling dark universe that ratchets up noir to an astonishing level.”



Jason Starr (bestselling author of THE PACK): "STREET RAISED is a full-tilt, dead-on descent into the Bay Area underworld, with lovably flawed characters and stunning dialogue. Every page, it seems, has something to marvel at. This is literary crime of the highest order, on par with the work of the great Eddie Bunker. Pearce Hansen is a major new talent."



Joe Lansdale (author of BUBBA HO-TEP starring Bruce Campbell): “STREET RAISED is a scar of a book, but it's a beautifully healed scar. Gutsy, fast-paced, written in an electric style. Recommended.”



Eddie Muller (founder and President of the Film Noir Foundation, in his San Francisco Chronicle review): “A fast, ferocious and often ugly ride through the East Bay's feral underground. Hansen's tale is a curious blend of drug culture minutia and a story line that's more a cranked-up fable than a traditional crime story. In its best passages, STREET RAISED suggests a contemporary version of Jack Black's classic 1926 memoir of itinerant criminal life, You Can’t Win – albeit a heavily armed, hyperviolent update.”



Here's an excerpt from Little Willy's homecoming:



He looked around, using the candle light to examine the place he called home, and what few possessions he had left. Like any drowning man, Little Willy was clasping tight to whatever flotsam promised to keep him from sinking beneath the surface forever.

He sure didn’t have much keeping him afloat here: The exposed un-sheet-rocked interior walls, two-by-four pine framing backed by peeling tarpaper. The workbench next to the door that was the only level surface suitable for using as a table or desk, and the barstool that was his only chair. The plywood coffin-sized inset niche built into the interior wall that Willy slept in, on a greasy sleeping bag atop a leaky air mattress: an air mattress so leaky he had to wake and re-inflate the air mattress several times whenever he slept on it.

The cement floor and the snowdrifts of dirty clothes carpeting it, with slugs exploring the pockets of the clothing for lint and dried sweat; he had to be careful about removing the slugs when he put the clothes on, otherwise they squooshed between his fingers. All the articles of clothing with any value were gone from the pile of course, sold long ago to a used clothes store up on Shattuck – a bit of a hump from where Willy’s house was on 63rd, especially when you were lugging a double armload of clothing.

And the (almost empty) burlap sack of food hanging from the rafter so the vermin that rustled through the garage whenever the candles were out couldn’t steal Willy’s almost non-existent sustenance. Little Willy took pride in having cut his food intake down to about two cans of beans a week. The hunger button wasn’t quite working right for him anymore but every few days, like clockwork, he’d open a can of whatever was in the sack and eat it cold. He didn’t mind it unheated, but it wouldn’t’ve mattered if he did – the garage had no power, no cooking facilities and no running water.