Switchblade announces 2011 titles

The Spinetingler crew has been telling you about the Switchblade crew for over a year now and people are starting to listen. Over two years and four releases, Switchblade has been bringing the best dark crime fiction to the reading public. The name Switchblade is quickly becoming synonymous with quality and is a name you can trust. The best part about Switchblade releases is that most of the names are authors that you haven’t heard of but never forget once you do.

Last year when Switchblade was announced their 2009 and 2010 titles were already in place which left some of us to wonder what was next. The wait is over and the news is good. The Switchblade page of the PM Press site recently updated to show their upcoming 2011 releases. Check it. There will be three books to look forward to in 2011. An anthology and two novels.

Switchblade continues their trend of grabbing from the edges. You may not recognize the names of the new authors but after you hear about them you’ll be glad you did.

Check out all of the info after the jump.

The anthology is called Send My Love and A Molotov Cocktail. It is edited by Gary Phillips and Andrea Gibbons and will be a Spring title.

Burn, Baby, Burn.

From the war-torn streets of Paris to Oakland’s Black Panthers putting the Man against the wall, from the sins of the past perpetrated by the bosses to modern-day Bolsheviks looking to even the score, to plotting old timers and youngsters jacked to the net like a test lab monkey, SEND MY LOVE AND A MOLOTOV COCKTAIL! is an incendiary mix of original and out-of-print stories from the past, present and fearful future about the fight for a better world.

The other Spring title is called The Wrong Thing by this cat named Barry Graham. Who? Barry Graham that’s who. A Scottish fighter who now calls Arizona home. Did I mention he’s a Buddhist? He is and if you’re like me you’re wondering if a Buddhist can write noir. As much as I’m loathe to quote an Amazon review how can I pass this quote up from one of his older books “A disturbing look into the soul of a deeply psychotic author. If you have ever wondered what form the anti-chist will take, read this novel.” I’ve been assured that the dude does noir like nobody’s business.

Here’s the synopsis:

They call him the Kid. He’s a killer, a dark Latino legend of the Southwest’s urban badlands, “a child who terrifies adults.” They speak of him in whispers in dive bars near closing time. Some claim to have met him. Others say he doesn’t exist, a phantom blamed for every unsolved act of violence, a ghost who haunts every blood-splattered crime scene.

But he is real. He’s a young man with a love of cooking and reading, an abiding loneliness and an appetite for violence. He is a cipher, a projection of the dreams and nightmares of people ignored by Phoenix’s economic boom…and a contemporary outlaw in search of an ordinary life. Love brings him the chance at a new life in the form of Vanjii, a beautiful, damaged woman. But try as he might to abandon the past, his past won’t abandon him. The Kid fights back in the only way he knows – and sets in motion a tragic sequence of events that lead him to an explosive conclusion shocking in its brutality and tenderness.

The third 2011 Switchblade release will be coming out in the Fall. It’s called Prudence Couldn’t Swim by James Kilgore. Again you might be asking yourself who? We don’t know much about the project yet but here’s what we know about the man.

James Kilgore was a member of the SLA. This is the group that kidnapped Patti Hearst though he joined the them afterwards. In 1975 James Kilgore and other SLA members robbed a bank where a customer was killed. The aftermath would result in Kilgore changing his name and spending 27 years on the run before getting caught and doing six and a half years for his part in the robbery and death of the customer. During his time on the run he earned a PHD and lived in South Africa during the 90′s. While in prison he completed the novel We Are All Zimbabweans Now. He has since written a trilogy of South African crime novels and continues working on other projects.

If his novel is even half as interesting as his life is then it will be one hell of a novel.

When we know more about Prudence Couldn’t Swim we’ll let you know.

There you have it, your 2011 Switchblade titles. Sounds good don’t it.

Brian Lindenmuth

Brian is the non-fiction editor of Spinetingler magazine and one of the fiction editors of Snubnose Press. In addition to Spinetingler his work has appeared in Crimespree magazine and at BSC Review, Galleycat and the Mulholland Books website. He also heads the Spinetingler Award committee.

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