It's Been a Blast

By Howard Akler

Detective noir meets spec fic in this story of an elusive biotech artist

The near-ish future. We're in a city that feels almost utopian; even the aftermath of a disastrous train explosion has turned into a kind of artists' commune.

Willa Bergson, private investigator (she prefers 'info specialist'), has been hired to find Zed, an artist and survivor of the blast, whose latest work is a single bottle of perfume that fetched $1.1 million and replicated the stench after the explosion. He was planning his next project, which will use hallucinogenic morning glory seeds, when he vanished.

Mob bosses, art-world doyennes, and sockless artists are all on the hunt for Zed too. Who will find him first? And how is Willa's family implicated?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1552455416
• ISBN13: 9781552455418
• Release Date: June 2027
• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Length: 144 Pages