About Galveston

Scribner (2010)

From the book jacket:

Recalling the moody violence of the early novels of Cormac McCarthy and Denis Johnson, a dark and visceral debut set along the seedy wastelands of Galveston by a young writer with a hard edge to his potent literary style.

On the same day that Roy Cady is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he senses that his boss, a dangerous loan-sharking bar-owner, wants him dead. Known "without affection" to members of the boss's crew as "Big Country" on account of his long hair, beard, and cowboy boots, Roy is alert to the possibility that a routine assignment could be a deathtrap. Which it is. Yet what the would-be killers do to Roy Cady is not the same as what he does to them, which is to say that after a smoking spasm of violence, they are mostly dead and he is mostly alive.

Before Roy makes his getaway, he realizes there are two women in the apartment, one of them still breathing, and he sees something in her frightened, defiant eyes that causes a fateful decision. He takes her with him as he goes on the run from New Orleans to Galveston, Texas—an action as ill-advised as it is inescapable.

The girl's name is Rocky, and she is too young, too tough, too sexy—and far too much trouble. Roy, Rocky, and her sister hide in the battered seascape of Galveston's country-western bars and fleabag hotels, a world of treacherous drifters, pickup trucks, and ashed-out hopes. Any chance that they will find safety there is soon lost. Rocky is a girl with quite a story to tell, one that will pursue and damage Roy for a very long time to come in this powerful and atmospheric thriller, impossible to put down.

Constructed with maximum tension and haunting aftereffect, written in darkly beautiful prose, Galveston announces the arrival of a major new literary talent.

"Galveston, in its authenticity and fearless humanism, recalls only the finest examples of the form: Jacques Tourneur’s “Out of the Past” and David Goodis’s “Down There,” Carl Franklin’s “One False Move” and James Ellroy’s “Black Dahlia.” — Dennis Lehane, author of Moonlight Mile, Mystic River, and Gone, Baby Gone

"Galveston is a haunting and haunted tale, beautifully rendered, an uncommonly well written thriller moving in its descriptions of people struggling to escape the gravity of the past amid a ruinous landscape." — Kem Nunn, author of Tijuana Straights

"Galveston is an assured debut full of hard truths, a throwback novel that ends up shouldering the noir genre forward." — Chuck Hogan, author of Devils in Exile and Prince of Thieves

"[A] taut first novel suffused with a strong noir sensibility... a fine crime-fiction debut." — Booklist

"Nic Pizzolatto's beautiful, lucid prose seems to flow like water or like music. He know how to write in the marrow of his bones. This will be the first of many brilliant books. Hooray for talent, that rare and lovely gift of the gods."
— Ellen Gilchrist, author of Victory Over Japan and Nora Jane

"... a carefully crafted work shrouded in dark Southern landscapes." — Time Out Chicago

Listen to Nic read from Galveston

About Galveston

Recent News

The Last Magazine

The Magnificent Seven

True Detective

Prix du Premier Roman

Galveston finalist for Barnes and Noble Discover Award

Edgar Awards

Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers

Dennis Lehane reviews Galveston in the New York Times Book Review

Times-Picayune: ‘Of hurricanes, hitmen and love among the ruined’

Dallas Morning News: ‘Knockout crime noir’

Publisher's Weekly Starred Review