The Silverberg Business

Robert Freeman Wexler  - published August 2022

trade paper · 288 pages · $17 · 9781618732019 | ebook · 9781618732026 | Edelweiss

In 1888 in Victoria, Texas, for a simple job, a Chicago private eye gets caught up in much darker affairs and ends up in the poker game to end all poker games.

Read

» an interview by Tobias Carroll, Skulls, Detectives, and the Texas Surreal, in Vol. 1 Brooklyn.
» an excerpt on Lithub.

Listen

» Robert interviewed by Rick Kleffel on Narrative Species
» Robert & Victor LaValle reading @ KGB Bar, NYC, 4/20/22
» Vick Mickunas interviews Robert on WYSO.

In 1888, Shannon, a Chicago private detective, returns home to Galveston, Texas for a wedding. Galveston’s new rabbi asks Shannon to find Nathan Silverberg, gone missing along with a group of swindlers who claim to be soliciting money for a future colony of Romanian Jewish refugees.

What seems to be a simple job soon pushes Shannon into stranger territory. His investigations lead him to a malevolent white-haired gambler, monstrous sand dune totems, and a group of skull-headed poker players trapped in an endless loop of cards and alcohol, who may be his only means to survive the business.

With The Silverberg Business, Robert Freeman Wexler has delivered a gloriously strange hard-boiled tale that crosses genres and defies expectations.

Reviews

“By subverting expectations in both genre and character, Wexler’s writing continually asked me to look closely, beyond initial expectations and surface observations—much like a detective must. This genre-defying novel works at many levels to consider what it means to live as an outsider in a landscape that holds a dark mirror to our contemporary era. And it’s not only deeply-layered: it’s a page-turner, a wild ride, and an immensely enjoyable read. The Silverberg Business is a mystery that kept me thinking about its deeper questions and haunting images long after the case was closed.”
— Melissa Benton Barker, Ancillary Review of Books

“It’s one of the mostly deeply weird novels I’ve read in some time, at times hallucinatory and dreamlike, at other times gritty and naturalistic. We’ve heard a lot in the past several years about genre-blending or ‘‘cross-genre’’ fiction, but Wexler starts out by combining two genres that seldom come up in these discussions: the western and the hard-boiled private eye mystery.”
— Gary K. Wolfe, Locus

“Steeped in the early history of Texas’s statehood and laced with eerie portents of supernatural horror, the outstanding latest from Wexler (The Painting and the City) impresses with its originality and inventiveness. In 1888, a Jewish private detective who goes by the name of Shannon travels from Chicago to Victoria, Tex., to investigate the disappearance of New Yorker Nathan Silverberg, who was sent with donor funds to buy land on the Texas coast for a settlement of Romanian Jewish refugees. Shannon discovers that Silverberg was first swindled, then murdered by a pair of con men, one of whom—a gambler named Stephens—wears an ornate ring with magic powers. When Shannon pursues Stephens, the ring’s magic transports him to an otherworldly “scratch land” populated by skull-headed beings whose rituals—involving card games and strange dancing—shape a cosmic context for catastrophic events that unfold in the human world. Wexler keeps his twisty plot refreshingly unpredictable and endows his characters—even the non-talking skullheads—with vividly realized personalities that enliven his surreal, atmospheric tale. This weird western packs a wallop.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Shannon isn’t planning to become embroiled in a case while visiting his family in Galveston, but when his old rabbi asks him to look into a group of men who might be swindling Jewish refugees, he can’t say no. . . . In this effective, creeping, weird-western novel, time slips, hands fold, and something ancient brews. Wexler refuses to give the reader all of the answers, instead leaving them with a slight, satisfying shiver and visions of stormy seas.” — Booklist

“A weird but oddly convincing creature feature.” —Kirkus Reviews

Early reader reactions

“Certainly the strangest book I’ve ever read, and strangeness is a thing that I take to. The grotesque horrors, the impossibilities, the shifting scenes, Silverberg’s skull, the skull-heads, the wooden house that turns into a mansion without the detective finding it particularly odd. It is in fact a book not like anything I’ve ever read.”
— John Crowley, author of Little, Big

“A haunting novel that traverses an American West inhabited by nightmarish characters, human and otherwise, The Silverberg Business evokes the unease of classic weird fiction with a contemporary gloss: William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land by way of Jim Jarmusch and Cormac McCarthy. Unnerving and unforgettable.” — Elizabeth Hand, author of Hokuloa Road

“Robert Freeman Wexler never fails to knock me out, and The Silverberg Business hits like a hurricane—there’s strangeness and beauty on every page. The novel is that rare thing, a weird western that’s truly weird, set in a Texas that’s simultaneously gritty, violent, and real, yet soaked in myth. Don’t miss this.” — Daryl Gregory, author of Revelator

“This philosophical Jewish-Texan retro-neo-noir—at once detective story, western, and ambling picaresque—is populated by a memorable cast of schemers, toughs, and oddballs, and rendered with a keen eye and ear for detail.” — J. Robert Lennon, author of Subdivision

Praise for Robert Wexler’s books

“An unusual, haunting tale from a distinctive new voice.” — Lisa Tuttle, London Sunday Times

“This complex, enthralling novel is concerned with relations between art and commerce, and nature and commerce; the importance of the past; the everyday oppression of capitalism; and how art may shape history.” — Booklist (starred review)

“As buoyant and airy as a center-ring trapeze act.” — Publisher’s Weekly

“Quietly stunning.” — Asimov’s

“Wexler demonstrates a wonderful touch with his writing: to render Lewis’s lengthy inner journey through this dream-state without losing a sense of living, vital immediacy is an extraordinary accomplishment.”—New York Review of Science Fiction

“A fascinating, deeply bizarre adventure.”—Faren Miller, Locus

Also

» an interview on Good People, Cool Things.

Previously

Aug. 23, 8 p.m. Two Dollar Radio HQ, Columbus, OH — with Jeffrey Ford
Aug. 27, 8 p.m. The Emporium, Yellow Springs, OH
Aug. 29, 7 p.m. Joseph-Beth, Cincinnati, OH — in conversation with Rebecca Kuder
Aug. 30, 7 p.m. Book People, Austin, TX
Aug. 31, 6:30 p.m. Brazos Bookstore, Houston, TX
Sep. 13, 7 p.m. Book Cellar, Chicago, IL — with Jon Langford
Oct. 13, 6 p.m. Yellow Springs Library, Yellow Springs, OH — with guitar accompaniment by Brady Burkett of Stark Folk Band
Nov. 3-6, World Fantasy Convention, New Orleans, LA
Nov. 19, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Books by the Bank, Cincinnati, OH

About the author

Robert Freeman Wexler’s novel The Painting and the City has recently been released in paperback by the Visible Spectrum and his short story collection Undiscovered Territories: Stories is out now from PS Publishing. He was born in Houston, Texas and currently lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio with the writer Rebecca Kuder and their child. His website and blog are at robertfreemanwexler.com

Cover art by Jon Langford.