Sly Bang (Novel)
In this breakneck, futuristic, socio-sexual-psychological thriller, Larissa Shmailo tells the story of Nora Volkhonsky, a smart FBI agent targeted by multiple evildoers. As bad guys and worse guys close in on her, Nora’s main goal is to survive. She is helped somewhat by her “telepathic” powers, but her experience is often more dream than reality. “Who was sending these clangs and hoodoo messages? Who was receiving hers? Who wanted her insane or dead?” Fasten your seatbelt as you ride along a wicked highway with Sly Bang’s tough, spirited heroine.
Thaddeus Rutkowski, author of Border Crossings
Excerpt:
Michael’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I know about the aliens, know about the great pterodactyls who have come to you, and the chick they sent as emissary, also for forgiveness, because you seem to be able to forgive anyone or anything. I still don’t know what they did, because you don’t seem to either, but I am guessing they are serial killers, too, if I know my Nora. Some kind of extraterrestrial Nazis.”
As though the terrestrial ones weren’t enough, Nora thought. She remembered Heidegger, so popular now in ontical and ontological studies, joining the Nazi party, not out of conviction, but to further his career. She never could read him. But Nietzsche, a Russian professor out of some philological institute, maybe the Gorky, had told her that the mad syphilitic’s (or was it cancer, as they now thought?) last words were “Death to anti-Semites.” How he wept when the horse in the street was beaten! She somehow could not separate their critical stances from their lives. Look, just look at the ideologues, at Marx’s children starving and Rousseau’s abandoned. Fine flying on paper, but in reality, nasty, brutish, and short. Was Hobbes short, she wondered.…
Michael shouted through her thoughts. “Nora, where are you? You’re blocking me. Don’t fight me, honey, I really do love you. Would I go to all this trouble, take all these risks, if I didn’t? This is what they sing about, Nora.”
Nora felt herself softening. She felt Michael’s glow. This nut really thought he was in love with her. . .
★★★★★