A crime novel with a twist, A Serpent Uncoiled is a wry, witty and utterly unique take on the classic private eye novel.
A missing mobster. A bizarre spiritualist society. And three deaths, linked by a chilling forensic detail.
Working as an enforcer in London's criminal underworld brought Dan Shaper to the edge of a breakdown. Now he's a private investigator, kept perilously afloat by a growing cocktail of drugs. He needs to straighten-up and rebuild his life, but instead gets the attention of his old gangland masters and a job-offer from Mr George Glass. The elderly eccentric claims to be a New Age Messiah, but now needs a saviour of his own. He's been marked for murder.
Adrift amidst liars and thugs, Shaper must push his capsizing mind to its limits: stalked not only by a unique and terrifying killer, but by the ghosts of his own brutal past.
'Off-the-wall . . . Gargantuan literary flourishes makes Spurrier's style dirtier, rougher and infinitely more fascinating' - The Truth About Books
Simon Spurrier was born in 1981. Since 2001 he's become a major writer for the UK's foremost adult comic 2000AD, and in recent years has published multiple projects through U.S. giants such as Marvel (X-Men Legacy, Wolverine), D.C., Avatar Press, Dark Horse and Image.
He began his career as a prose writer in 2003 with a novelisation of the videogame Fire Warrior. He subsequently produced work-for-hire genre novels for BL Publishing and Abaddon Press.
In late 2007 Spurrier published his first creator-owned novel, Contract, through Hodder Headline. This was followed in 2011 by A Serpent Uncoiled.
Spurrier was born in Somewhere-You've-Never-Heard-Of, grew up in the heartlands of Nowhere-Terribly-Interesting, and lives today in North London. He spends much of his time in quiet cafes and pubs, where he exerts an unwanted cosmic magnetism upon any loud or malodorous patrons who should enter.