Books

The Four Fingers of Death

A Novel
By Rick Moody (Trade Paperback, 2011)
Montese Crandall is a downtrodden writer whose rare collection of baseball cards won't sustain him, financially or emotionally, through the grave illness of his wife. Luckily, he swindles himself a job churning out a novelization of the 2025 remake of a 1963 horror film, The Crawling Hand. Crandall tells therein of the United States, in a bid to regain global eminence, launching at last its doomed manned mission to Mars. Three space pods with nine Americans on board travel three months, expecting to spend three years as the planet's first colonists. When a secret mission to retrieve a flesh-eating bacterium for use in bio-warfare is uncovered, mayhem ensues.

Only a lonely human arm (missing its middle finger) returns to earth, crash-landing in the Arizona desert. The arm may hold the secret to reanimation or it may simply be an infectious killing machine. It's crawl through the heartbroken wasteland of civilization is recorded in this stunningly inventive, sometimes hilarious, monumental novel.
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  • Little, Brown and Company

    • Format: Trade Paperback

    • Price: $15.99 US/$17.99 CAN

    • ISBN-13: 9780316118934

    • On Sale Date: 07/13/2011

    • Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

    Full Details

    Formats Available: Trade Paperback, Electronic Book

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Montese Crandall is a downtrodden writer whose rare collection of baseball cards won't sustain him, financially or emotionally, through the grave illness of his wife. Luckily, he swindles himself a job churning out a novelization of the 2025 remake of a 1963 horror film, The Crawling Hand. Crandall tells therein of the United States, in a bid to regain global eminence, launching at last its doomed manned mission to Mars. Three space pods with nine Americans on board travel three months, expecting to spend three years as the planet's first colonists. When a secret mission to retrieve a flesh-eating bacterium for use in bio-warfare is uncovered, mayhem ensues.

Only a lonely human arm (missing its middle finger) returns to earth, crash-landing in the Arizona desert. The arm may hold the secret to reanimation or it may simply be an infectious killing machine. It's crawl through the heartbroken wasteland of civilization is recorded in this stunningly inventive, sometimes hilarious, monumental novel.

THE FOUR FINGERS OF DEATH is Rick Moody's ninth book. He has received the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, the Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Paris Review's Aga Khan Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, NY.


  • The Four Fingers of Death by Rick Moody

  • "[A] comic tour de force...Moody is at his most daring and arresting." (BookForum).

  • "Moody's powers of invention, his ease in his own prose, his ability to develop interesting characters--in short, his enormous gifts as a writer--are on full display here. And when he wants to write a gorgeous paragraph, he delivers as you know he can, even when he's still spoofing." (The New York Times Book Review).

  • "A grab bag of sardonic fun." (The Dallas Morning News).

  • "Moody's foremost accomplishment....Moves with unapologetic swagger, as it flaunts the extremes of storytelling." (Bookslut).

  • "As pulpy... as The Four Fingers of Death might sound, it's oddly something sweeter and more profound." (Associated Press).

  • "Comic, grim, tender and masterful." (Bloomberg).

  • "Sci-fi as only Moody could write it--in turns touching and outrageous." ("Very Short List," The Observer).

  • "700-plus pages of wacky, wonderful imaginings." (More ).

  • "Entertaining and often poignant." (The New Yorker).

Formats

Product Details

The Four Fingers of Death
  • Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
  • Price: $15.99 US/$17.99 CAN
  • Pages: 752
  • Physical Dimensions: 5-1/2" x 8-1/4"
  • Audio Run Time: 0
  • ISBN-13: 9780316118934
  • On Sale Date: 07/13/2011
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