Saint the Terrifying — Joshua Mohr

A West Oakland punk acquires a new name and new calling. In chasing down a gang of thieves, Saint turns his gritty urban saga into the stuff of legend. Saint the Terrifying is the story of a punk. An ex-con, Saint was raised in the wilds of Norway, where his father brought him up in the old traditions and taught him the way of the Viking. Now Saint finds himself emersed in the Oakland music scene. On stage, he wears a pair of antlers that have been painted with yellow reflective paint, calling to mind bolts of lightning. Off stage, he’s hunting down criminals no one else cares to find, and falling in love with the singer of his band, Trick Wilma. Bay Area author Joshua Mohr taps the troubled vein of class warfare and gentrification in the Bay Area to tell an ambitious tale of love and retribution. Saint’s role as hardboiled detective is informed by Mohr’s deft interweaving of recent history, including Oakland’s Ghost Ship warehouse fire—a tragedy that Mohr revisits in a bold act of reclamation. As Saint uncovers the crew who’ve been stealing the gear around town, the truth threatens to unravel Saint’s world, leading to a heartbreaking showdown. Propelled by a broken Baroque of punk language, Saint the Terrifying examines tensions between community and individual identity, social activism and vigilantism, while taking the reader on a roller coaster ride of hard-boiled twists and hardcore music. A badass’s badass, Saint’s the protagonist that begs the question: What if Johnny Rotten had a baby with The Rock? (Saint the Terrifying is Book One of the Saint Series: a three-novel epic structured like an Icelandic Viking saga—except this Viking just so happens to live in the 21st century and play in a punk band. The 1000-page project will release as paperback originals over the course of consecutive seasons; and true to the Viking tradition, hits its crescendo at the gates of hell.)