Castle of Terror

Detective Hale Jenkins had one job: escorting criminal Bud Griffin on a plane. Then the crash landed him in Gnat, a surreal realm where giants and dwarfs wander the streets, where beauty is致命的, and where the throne itself is won on a bowling lane. This is 1940s pulp science fiction at its most gloriously unhinged. Now Jenkins must navigate a world where Lucretia Borgia reigns as a stunningly dangerous power broker, where his criminal charge becomes a rival in a competition that will determine who controls this bizarre kingdom. The only way home runs through the lane. Liston builds his oddball fantasy with genuine tension and dark humor, letting a hardboiled detective loose in a world that makes no sense and forcing him to adapt or die trying. The novel reads like Raymond Chandler dreaming about Oz. It is pure mid-century pulp imagination: odd, earnest, and utterly unafraid to be strange. For readers who want genre fiction that refuses to play by normal rules.