A masterfully written, darkly hilarious crime novel from a debut novelist, set in a small bayou town that has recently been devastated by the BP oil spill.
TOM COOPER has been published in dozens of literary magazines and journals, most recently in Oxford American, Mid-American Review, Gulf Coast, Boulevard, and Willow Springs. His stories have been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize. He was born in Ft. Lauderdale, Forida, and now lives in New Orleans, where he writes and teaches. The Marauders is his first novel.
"Sad, grotesque, hilarious, breathtaking...stands with ease among
the work of such stylistic predecessors as Twain, Carl Hiaasen and
Elmore Leonard. One thing that gives “The Marauders” its own clear
hallmark is its quicksilver prose. The book’s other standout aspect
is how it demands and earns sympathy for all but its most evil
characters and for the fate-blasted but nature-blessed locale they
inhabit. You might not want to retire there, but you’ll savor this
visit." - The Wall Street Journal
"Excellent, finely written and funny – an admirable novel from a
very promising writer." - USA Today
“It’s always the voice, the singular sound of a place like none
other, that draws you into a regional mystery. In Tom Cooper’s
first novel, The Marauders, that beguiling music comes out of the
Louisiana bayous, where a raucous chorus of shrimp fishermen,
marijuana growers, treasure hunters, professional crooks and common
thieves fight to be heard…It hurts to laugh at the preposterous
get-rich-quick schemes of these swamp denizens, but laugh we must,
if only to find some relief from the grim realism of Cooper’s
portrait of life in these coastal communities.” – The New York
Times Book Review
"The Marauders is so damned good you won't believe it's a
first novel…and by the time you reach page 20, you won't care. It's
rollicking, angry, eye-popping, and fall-on-the-floor funny,
sometimes in the course of a single scene. The cast is winning, the
post-Katrina bayou setting is richly evoked, the dialogue crackles,
and the story rolls on a wave of invention. It's a little Elmore
Leonard, a little Charles Portis, and very much its own uniquely
American self. Basically, Tom Cooper has written one hell of a
novel." - Stephen King
"More fun than a book about the aftermath of an ecological disaster
has any right to be" - Esquire
"Wade into moral muck with the pill-popping, treasure-hunting,
one-armed hero of this finger-lickin'-good Louisiana swamp noir." -
O, The Oprah Magazine
"A sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking "swamp noir" gumbo
with echoes of John Kennedy Toole, Larry Brown and Daniel
Woodrell…The Marauders is as grounded in the simple truth as it is
awash in the outlandishly eccentric." - Shelf Awareness
"I can't wait for Cooper's next book. Nor can my wife, and she and
I seldom agree about novels. He's fun to read--he keeps your head
up and your eyes big." - Garden and Gun
"Tom Cooper expertly maps a Gulf Coast of miscreants, romantics,
and a severely beleaguered nature, digging at the old, weird south
with his own enthralling voice. 'Marauders' is propelled by
wonderful characters depicted with grace, humanity, and that rarest
of talents: a truly hilarious wit. Mr. Cooper joins such talents as
Twain, Portis, and O'Toole in mining the humor of the Southern
freak show to deliver the universal news of the human heart." --Nic
Pizzolatto, author of Galveston and creator of HBO's 'True
Detective'
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