Crooked

Pulled back into a world of intrigue and terror, can a retired investigator for the church unravel the terrible secrets of a very personal murder from his past? Even with the murderer back from the dead? Maybe if he can survive the terrors from the nightmarish Between long enough.

Welcome to Brine, an impossible and decaying city where death need not be the end--a place where steampunk and horror blend seamlessly. It's a dismal place for the average citizen, worked to death and then brought back to work some more. But it's tough at the top of the food chain, too, as church and state are in a perpetual shadow war. And now, a mysterious new player from Between is emerging to challenge it all.

Between. Just on the other side of the mirror lies this phantasmagorical land known only as Between, and it will tolerate the city’s intrusion no longer. This shadowy realm of nightmare and madness is ever present, just on the other side of the mirror, and its inhabitants have their own agenda. Everything’s about to break.

This tale is a blend of steampunk and horror, in the vein of Lovecraft crossed with Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. This is the pseudo-Victorian otherworld city called Brine, full of impossibly tall, crooked spires and a massive circular waterfall and zombies and twisted monsters and... well, where should I start?

"Crooked is a fascinating, vivid story set in a world filled with technologies based on the ability to preserve a creature or human past their death. It's beautifully well-thought out and rich with detail. I picked it up because it was described to me as "steampunk Lovecraft" and yes, that's somewhat accurate, but the book is so much meatier (sometimes literally) than Lovecraft's writing. There's a melange of points of view, all combining for a fractured kaleidoscopic glimpse of an absolutely intriguing world. Based on this, I'll pick up any Richard Pett book I run across."—Cat Rambo, author of BEASTS OF TABAT

"Richard Pett lives in a decaying mansion squatting on the crossroads between China Mieville, Charles Dickens, and Jim Butcher. In CROOKED, he wrote down all the terrible, bizarre, and brutally compelling things he saw in that horrible place, and the results are wild, clever, and unforgettable."—Robert Brockway, author of THE UNNOTICEABLES and RX: A TALE OF ELECTRONEGATIVITY

"Creepy, fascinating, seedy, secret-filled. Gripping characters and monsters, monsters, and more monsters! Not to be missed."—Ed Greenwood, creator of THE FORGOTTEN REALMS

"If you're familiar with the work of Richard Pett, then you know that he's a master of the macabre and a painter of unearthly horrors. CROOKED is a stunningly cool book."—Colin McComb, author of OATHBREAKER ​