Courtesy of nathanlarson.net
Musician and composer Nathan Larson of Shudder to Think, Swiz and Boys Don’t Cry fame has announced that he will be venturing into a new medium — the written word.
Akashic Press is set to publish The Dewey Decimal System, which according to the press release, is said to be “the first book in a literary-noir series featuring an obsessive compulsive protagonist in a ravaged New York City.
Akashic’s website describes the plot like this:
After a flu pandemic, a large-scale terrorist attack, and the total collapse of Wall Street, New York City is reduced to a shadow of its former self. As the city struggles to dig itself out of the wreckage, a nameless, obsessive-compulsive veteran with a spotty memory, a love for literature, and a strong if complex moral code (that doesn’t preclude acts of extreme violence) has taken up residence at the main branch of the New York Public Library on 42nd Street.
Dubbed “Dewey Decimal” for his desire to reorganize the library’s stock, our protagonist (who will reappear in the next novel in this series) gets by as bagman and muscle for the New York City’s unscrupulous district attorney. Decimal takes no pleasure in this kind of civic dirty work. He’d be perfectly content alone amongst his books. But this is not in the cards, as the DA calls on Dewey for a seemingly straightforward union-busting job.
What unfolds throws Dewey into a bloody tangle of violence, shifting allegiances, and old vendettas, forcing him to face the darkness of his own past, and the question of his buried identity.
The book seems pretty interesting, not to mention pretty daunting from an author’s standpoint. Usually I’m weary about musicians transitioning into authorship (with the exception of Keith Richards, who is awesome), but Larson seems to have a pretty diverse background that I think would lead to a pretty good read.
