Deadbeat Escapement

By: Ledbetter, John

V.I.R.U.S. agents Val Siouxx and Levis Coak are desperate to develop a narrative that will keep their clandestine organization in lock-step with the American zeitgeist. In 1964, the spooks track down hermetic newbie novelist Thomas Ruggles Pynchon to his Mexico footlocker hideout to coerce him into writing a burn-book about Vito Paulekas, the Cold War-era F.B.I. asset-gone-rogue-turned-artist who has raised and radicalized a loyal troupe of dancing Freaks in his Hollywood, CA, basement studio. So, like, what gives, man? ​Will Pynchon accept the federal freelance gig? Will the paranoid pothead unearth the plot points connecting the Freak King to Tinsel Town, Theosophy, and the Black Dahlia/Manson Family/Zodiac Killer psyops?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GWGT4R51
• ISBN13: 9798218946029
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Vikon Village Books
• Length: 422 Pages
• Weight: 1.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher