The King of Methlehem
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"The King of Methlehemis utterly compelling and so realistic that you may find yourself crashing — scratching your arms and rubbing your bloodshot eyes when you finally put it down in the hour before dawn. Mark Lindquist has written a taut, stylish and gritty thriller."
– Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City
"The King of Methlehem is so brutal and honest I could feel my teeth falling out as I read it. With street-tough prose and astonishing human insight, Lindquist takes you deep inside the racing, arrhythmic hearts of tweekers, leaving you bleeding and jonesing for more."
– Will Clarke, author of The Worthy and Lord Vishnu's Love Handles
"Mark Lindquist's fascinating walk on Tacoma's wild side is noir for those who came of age in the time of Nirvana."
– Carol Wolper, author of Mr. Famous and The Cigarette Girl
"Having battled methamphetamine distribution as a prosecuting attorney, celebrated novelist Lindquist is well situated to write a thriller about a detective who's chasing down a meth dealer. Lindquist was also one of People's 100 most eligible bachelors in 2000."
– Library Journal
“Lindquist puts his experience combating the scourge of methamphetamines as a Washington State prosecutor to good use in his fourth novel, a gripping thriller....The quality writing and flashes of gallows humor raise this above the usual tale of good guys vs bad guys.”
– Publishers Weekly
"A fine Tacoma writer crafts a taut and tense noir novel that gives an inside glimpse of the meth lab world, with it elusive kingpins and its frustrated cops on their trail; draws heavily upon Lindquist's own work as a trial attorney in the drug unit in the Pierce County Prosecutor's Office.
– Seattle Post Intelligencer
"Let's not get confused by the fact that Lindquist is a lawyer. The man is a literary genius — especially true for those of us who have the attention span and memory to recall the seminal Never Mind Nirvana.... This book is about reality, folks — wrestling stranger-than-truth fictions into another beautiful work of fiction."
– Paul Schrag, Weekly Volcano
"County prosecutor Mike Lawson, a quiet force for law and order who reads about Zen Buddhism and seeks inner peace, provides the third voice in this contemporary crime thriller.... Evocative details, such as the steps necessary to create meth from a mix of cold medicine and automotive supplies, enmesh us in Howard's mad world right up to the inevitable, satisfying conclusion. A grim thriller with an insider's view of a deadly epidemic."
– Kirkus Reviews
"Precise language and resonant facts ... a thriller about a driven Pierce County cop on the hunt for a meth entrepreneur who calls himself Howard Schultz, in honor of the Starbucks mogul. The meth king has a fiendish genius for hairsbreadth escapes, but he is both smart and half-crazed in his quest to win — just like his police pursuer.
– Tim Appelo, Seattle Times
"Mark Lindquist is a damn fine writer ... He’s seen addiction up close and has transferred his experience to the page with a striking clarity that’s hard to watch or look away from."
– Frank Bascombe, Ain'tItCool.com
"A gritty romp through the underbelly of Tacoma and outlying areas.... Lindquist's ability to shift among the perspectives of characters representing law enforcement, the courts, and a life of crime creates a provocative tale with several shades of gray."
– Barbara Llyod McMichael, The Olympian
"The methamphetamine cook has laid claim to a permanent place in criminal lore — the cross-pollination of the killer next door and the garage-based entrepreneur makes him a peculiarly American character. The novelist and drug-crime prosecutor Mark Lindquist introduces us to a chef among cooks … Howard Schultz.... Like Howard, Lindquist is best sifting through the grit and the gear of the home labs, with the blenders and pancake griddles, drain opener and coffee filters, rock salt and lithium batteries used to elevate garden-variety cold tablets into the powerful, addictive stimulant."
– New York Times Book Review
"Mark Lindquist's latest, a stylish thriller about a Pacific Northwest prosecutor battling a crafty drug kingpin, is that rare page-turner with brains and a racing pulse."
– Velocity Weekly
"Lindquist had the fortune or misfortune to be associated with the literary brat pack of the 80s, and, over the years, his books have enjoyed blurbs of endorsement from all the big players in that gang: Tama Janowitz, Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney. When the 80s became the 90s, Lindquist once again found himself with a view of the zeitgeist. He was living in Seattle watching the grunge scene develop, out of which came his book Never Mind Nirvana. Lindquist, who was once named by People magazine as one of the most eligible bachelors in America, released his latest novel last month: King of Methlehem. Though continuing Lindquist's fascination with pop culture, this novel is about speed freaks called tweekers, and draws more than any of his other work on Lindquist's day job working as a prosecutor in Pierce County and his life in Tacoma, Washington."
– Richard Abowitz, Los Angeles Times