Zen City, Iso

We sit at the hospital bedside of the irreverent, supremely laconic Orson Milo Palmer while he is medicated to death by two doctors. Palmer is a full-time fantasist, part-time Buddhist and possible serial killer. He is being forced to return to the past. He has to confront the truth behind Operation Agarthi and a series of unsolved murders before it’s too late. The nose of reality is firmly tweaked as we follow Palmer on his vertiginous descent into a dance-hall world of forgotten film stars, hot numbers, prosthetic limbs, strange sex and a remarkably cool Italian bubble car.

Zen City, Iso is the first in a series of Buddhist noire novels. Set in an absurdist alternative Asia, it draws in all manner of unlikely things from poetry, pulp fiction to naughty temple murals and weird, expressionist cinema. The story races along at a cracking pace and is shot through with pistol-whipping dialogue and razor-shards of Zen philosophy.
It also happens to be rather funny.