Black Boat Dancing: Volume 2 (Con Maknazpy) - Softcover

Cappa, Gerard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 095728294X ISBN 13: 9780957282940

Publisher: Piper's Head, 2015

The new cold war is heating up - pump primed by oil and the race to control the pipelines. Cyber warriors mine the dark side of international finance. Their money trail stretches from Macau and New York to Rio de Janeiro, Cyprus, Beirut and Odessa, and the finance lines of governments and gangsters criss cross through Ukraine and Crimea.

When Jorginho the Black Hat hacker goes AWOL in Portugal with the secrets of America's role in the Arab Spring rebellions, Maknazpy is enlisted to bring him back - dead or alive.

Maknazpy tracks the runaway through the narrow streets of old Lisbon until he is betrayed and the hunter becomes the hunted.

Juggling a hot money scam and cold war treachery, only his animal cunning for self preservation keeps him one step ahead of his US handlers, Chinese Military Intelligence, the Russian Mafia and a Brazilian street gang.

No one has a monopoly on moral authority in this dark world and Maknazpy is no knight-errant asserting the moral good - and that's why he may just survive.

"A remarkable thriller about money, technology and geopolitics that manages to feel both timeless and timely. Black Boat Dancing contains plenty of familiar thriller comfort food but there’s also a lot here that is new, particularly in terms of style. Cappa constantly blends elements of traditional noir with subject matter that could only exist in the present. Mambo Italiano serves as a soundtrack while black hat hackers create mayhem, and pulp thriller dialogue is delivered alongside contemporary concepts like “Pipelineistan”. Thanks to Cappa’s gift for storytelling, the end result is extremely satisfying"- BestThrillers.com

"Writers from Chandler and Hammett through William Burroughs, Charles Willeford, James Elroy, Bret Easton Ellis and Don deLillo have shown how the administration of cities is not corrupt, but inherently predatory. Speaking directly to supra-national, neo-liberal depredation, Jean-Patrick Manchette and Don Delillo, are matched by Gerard Cappa, in Black Boat Dancing, and his earlier Blood from a Shadow. As with noir of the mid-20th century, protagonists are not destroyed but potentially redeemed by their own sin and suffering. They force their humanity to come to life. The ultimate 21st century heroism is to struggle for the control of one’s own destiny. Con Maknazpy’s struggle is a remarkable example - more complete, more blissfully anarchistic, than the nation-loving kind of hero" Jay A Gertzman

"Unique and unpredictable, always a nice experience, especially in a genre that is fraught with derivative copycats. Some really great concepts worth deeper deliberation. Almost literary at times, with the easy-flowing prose and powerful word choices - a well-written, intelligently complex novel with truly unexpected twists that will open your mind and keep you on your toes" - Indy Book Reviews

About the Author:

Gerard Cappa only read Irish books when he was younger - James Stephens, Flann O'Brien, Michael McLaverty, John McGahern, John Banville, the Blasket books. Or else Irish politics, history and philosophy. He must have lightened up a bit later on, that's when he started reading about murder as entertainment. The classics, of course, Hammett, Chandler, Cain, Himes, Parker, Macdonald, Jim Thompson. Then Ellroy, Mosley, Burke, Ian Rankin, John Harvey then all the Scandanavians. Started to match books to the places he travelled to -Orhan Pamuk in Turkey, Camilleri in Italy, Montalban in Spain, Mercier in Portugal (originally in German). He started to write yhe Maknazpy books as standard thrillers, no big messages. Then he realized he couldn't help it, all that stuff about being an underdog, free will limited by inherited cultural baggage and everyone's basic human right to be treated with dignity, it was all bound to come out.

• Publisher: Piper's Head
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 095728294X
• ISBN 13: 9780957282940
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 434