- Title:
- You Killled Wesley Payne
- Author:
- Sean Beaudoin
- Publisher:
- Little Brown Books
- Release Date:
- February 1, 2011
- ISBN:
- 978-031607742
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Junior Library Guild Official Selection
“Beaudoin plays a Chandler hand with a Tarantino smirk in this ultra-clever high-school noir, hitching you to a propulsive mystery with enough doublecrosses and blindsiding reveals to give you vertigo. Moreover, the opening “Clique Chart” might just be the funniest four pages you’ll read all year.”
Booklist starred review
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He’s come to do a job.
A job that involves a body.
A body wrapped in duct tape found hanging from the goal posts at the end of the football field.
You Killed Wesley Payne is a truly original and darkly hilarious update of classic pulp-noir, in which hard-boiled seventeen year old Dalton Rev transfers to the mean hallways of Salt River High to take on the toughest case of his life. The question isn’t whether Dalton’s going to get paid. He always gets paid. Or whether he’s gonna get the girl. He always (sometimes) gets the girl. The real question is whether Dalton Rev can outwit crooked cops and killer cliques in time to solve the mystery of “The Body” before it solves him.
Sean Beaudoin (Going Nowhere Faster, Fade to Blue) evokes the distinctive voices of legendary crime/noir authors Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson with a little bit of Mean Girls and Heathers throw in in for good measure. It’ll tease you, please you, and never ever leave you. Actually, that’s not true. It’s only a book. One that’s going to suck you in, spit you out, and make you shake hands with the devil. Probably.
“Beaudoin’s razor-sharp rhetorical wit plays smartly with the generic conventions of the hard-boiled detective novel, but the story is shaded throughout with typical adolescent male anxieties, making this parody more engaging and complex than the exemplars it plays off of.”
BCCB Starred Review
“You Killed Wesley Payne is a spectacular noir mystery filled with knife-sharp writing and clever turns. I loved it!”
Holly Black
Bestselling Author of The Curse Worksers & The Poison Eaters
“Fresh, funny, dark, and able to outsnark the snarkiest: You Killed Wesley Payne was a wonderful way to pass a hot summer day.”
Dr. Teri Lesesne
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About the Author:
Sean Beaudoin is the author of Going Nowhere Faster, Fade to Blue, and You Killed Wesley Payne. His stories and articles have appeared in numerous publications including Glimmer Train, The New Orleans Review, The Nervous Breakdown, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Onion, Instant City, The Rumpus, Opium, Barrelhouse, Redivider, Narrative, and Spirit: the In-flight magazine of Southwest Airlines. He is currently working on a collection of short stories and a crime fiction novel.
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