Pyres

by Derek Nikitas

Book Overview

Punky Lucia Moberg turns sixteen in a week. She steals CDs from stores, argues with Mom, pines for the rebel boy next door. But adolescence ends fast in a mall parking lot when Luc's professor father... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312363974
• ISBN13: 9780312363970
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Gut wrenching and very good!

Excellent book! Greg Isles should pick up a copy and refresh his memory on how to write a killer story! A well crafted novel that keeps you on the edge of your seat while not bowing down to trite, overdone mechanisms. Very fresh tale! Highly recommended, and I will be looking forward to future books from Derek Nikitas! This mystery/thriller digs deep to be a very human story about dealing with grief and recovering from life's disappointments.

Cold Wind to Valhalla

About eight years ago, an unknown author writing under the name of "Boston Teran" scorched the pages with "God is a Bullet", a brilliantly disturbing novel of child abduction, survival, and retribution set in southern California's feral western wastelands. Not since this blistering debut have I read a novel as provocative as Derek Nikitas' "Pyres", the story of a young teen launched from adolescence to adulthood in a few short winter weeks, the unwitting and unsuspecting victim caught in a web of dysfunctional families and despicable deeds. The lives of four women collide in Nikitas' masterpiece, Lucia "Luc" Moberg, the teen who sees her professor father murdered in an apparent botched murder, Luc's mother Blair, Tanya, the trailer trash mom-to-be running with the wrong crowd, and Greta, the hardened detective of the Rochester, New York PD with psychological baggage of her own drug around Luc's brutal coming-of-age journey. But if you're thinking this is sounding like "Steel Magnolias", think again, for there's no "chick lit" in these pages; a raw and violent nightmare of irony and emotion that twists and turns to an almost believable and infinitely entertaining climax. Setting the young Nikitas far above the pop fiction crowd is his beautifully descriptive writing and carefully molded characters, including the loathsome "Skeleton Crew" motorcycle crew, the "baddest" set of lowlifes I've come across since Teran's Cyrus and his Left-Handed Path rampaged the desserts of "God is a Bullet". These guys would fit in nicely with either Jerry Springer or Charles Manson, thugs you'll hope you never meet but know are out there lurking in those cinder block bars with parking lots full of chopped Harleys and broken beer bottles. But Nikitas' talents reach far beyond simple mayhem, succeeding in getting inside the head of a teenage girl who discovers the depth of her relationship with her father, and sees it strengthen after his murder. Remember the name - Derek Nikitas. This is American crime fiction about as good as it gets, a powerful lesson of literature and life that should not be missed.

Best First Novel

I give Nikitas' "Pyres" 5 stars for a best first novel. I am chagrined that I never read any of his short stories that probably deserve a collection rather than being hidden in a variety of magazine. I could hardly put this book down. I had to force myself not to rush, but to savory the every changing story. I am amazed at how much life, depth and truth this young writer could put into such a diverse collection of characters. I am 67 years old, have been a police officer and worked in the legal profession. In those years it seems I've run into everyone of those character's doppelganger. This immensely talented writer seems to have encountered these characters in half of that lifetime. If they come from his imagination he has insight beyond the norm. His tale is fast paced and never rings false. The motivations and fractured thinking of the characters is disturbingly real. Ask any large metropolitan police officer. William Beckerley San Carlos, CA.

A well written depressing atmospheric psychological crime thriller.

Fifteen years old Lucia Moberg gets her dad to take her to the nearby mall. Once there Lucia steals a CD from a store for her friend, but almost was caught. In a bit of a panic, she convinces her dad that it is time to leave so they go to the car. However, a man with a gun demands her dad turn over his wallet and the car keys. As she horribly watches her dad refuse to cooperate, the man shoots her father in the head splattering his brains all over the windshield and elsewhere. Rochester PD Detective Greta Hurd interrogates the teen and quickly rejects the carjacking scenario as a lie. Instead she widens the investigation to Lucia's frightened mother, the neighbor, and the Skeleton Crew gang. As Lucia struggles with her guilt, Great keeps prodding at her to tell the truth as she assumes this was crime of passion caused by a dysfunctional family; sort of like her own. This is a dark character study that grips the audience as the two lead protagonists, the cop and the teen, struggle with person demons that intrude on the case. Lucia is overloaded with guilt as she goes through one what if drill after another, but always comes back to same reality that she can depend on no one especially not her mom as she accepts culpability and tries to move on although the cop won't let. Greta sees the case through the myopic lens of her own dysfunction family so assumes either the teen or the mom killed the dad. PYRES is a well written depressing atmospheric psychological crime thriller. Harriet Klausner