A Place in the Dark/ The Glamour of Evil

“Frank Lentricchia’s new novel ranks as entertainment of a high order – funny, fast-moving and hot-blooded. It’s also the kind of novel that will appeal to readers who like their fiction to carry depth and range.” –Don DeLillo "Bravissimo!" —Lisa Scottoline "The Accidental Pallbearer is a brilliant piece of fiction, and a page turner to boot, able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the best writing in America today." --Jay Parini "The Accidental Pallbearer deserves to be read alongside the best literary detective fiction of our time. Lentricchia's protagonist is the anti-hero par excellence - you can't put him down, either physically or emotionally - whose only equal is Fabio Montale from the great Marseilles trilogy by Jean-Claude Izzo." --John R. MacArthur, publisher, Harper's “Vivid and unnerving … Eliot Conte is an instant original.” — The Washington Post ”Lentricchia captures the feel of upstate New York (Richard Russo territory) and of Italian American culture within a familiar genre, with predictable grit and wit. We hope to see more of Conte and perhaps of his promising romantic interest, a Troy policewoman.” – Booklist “There’s a Quentin Tarantino masculinity to this story of a private investigator known for solving knotty problems in not-quite-lawful ways.” –The Charlotte Observer “More than a thriller … Lentricchia’s prose soars…” — The Raleigh-Durham Herald-Sun “Lentricchia’s latest work, in my opinion his finest, certainly the one most accessible to a wide audience, is entitled “The Accidental Pallbearer,” a detective-crime-Mafioso novel set in Utica, full of bits and pieces of authentic Utica history, altered and molded into a totally fictional story that is fast-paced and thrilling, scene after scene. It has the hard-bitten diction and action of “Film Noir” (and I do believe it is destined to be made into a film). Central to the novel is the conflict of family loyalty versus family disintegration that makes the best of Italian-American fiction so riveting.” — The Union Observer Dispatch Praise for The Knifemen and Johnny Critelli "[Scenes that are] somber or funny or lose-your-lunch ugly....The sabotage and sadness are real, and the language out of the streets and kitchens and bedrooms is obscenely authentic." --Entertainment Weekly "Lentricchia has fashioned two short novels that display a rousing capacity for language and a gritty sense of the contemporary male mind." --Publishers Weekly “Brutal and uncompromising, brilliant and desperate.” —Rolling Stone “Original and lively. . . Frank Lentricchia is that rare thing, a professor of English with writing talent.” —Frank Kermode