cover image Butcher’s Road

Butcher’s Road

Lee Thomas. Lethe (www.lethepressbooks.com), $18 trade paper (318p) ISBN 978-1-59021-470-1

Stoker- and Lambda-winner Thomas (The German) creates a heady blend of gangster noir and supernatural horror. Butch Cardinal, washed-up wrestler turned gang enforcer, is caught between the wrath of Chicago’s Italian mob and the Alchemi, a mysterious organization of powerful magicians. After being set up and framed for murder, he flees to New Orleans with a stolen magical relic. There he discovers mystical talents and finds unexpected love with another man. Butch’s imaginatively realized world of gangsters, crooked cops, ruthless killers, and magic users is full of violence and cruelty, and is also intensely masculine; women are bit players at most. Thomas deftly manages a large cast of characters, though the number of narrative threads results in a hectic final act. (May)