EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT: Chapter 1 of Dodgers by Bill Beverly

‘A dazzling crime novel that’s equal parts coming-of-age tale à la Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and travelogue à la Kerouac.’ PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

‘Propulsive, brutally honest and yet unexpectedly tender, Dodgers is one of the best debuts I've read. I was absolutely gripped by the voice, the world of East and his brother, and surprised at nearly every turn. I audibly gasped at the end.' ATTICA LOCKE, author of Black Water Rising and Pleasantville

‘One of the greatest literary crime novels you will read in your lifetime’ DONALD RAY POLLOCK

For fans of THE WIRE, GEORGE PELECANOS, and CLOCKERS, Dodgers announces the arrival of an exceptional new talent. This gripping literary thriller, with an ensemble cast, fuses a moving, coming of age story with a meditation on the very nature of belonging.

When fifteen-year-old East, a low-level lookout for a Los Angeles drug organization, loses his watch-house in a police raid, his boss recruits him for a very different job: a road trip – straight down the middle of white, rural America – to assassinate a judge in Wisconsin.

Having no choice, East and a crew of untested boys – including his inscrutable, trigger-happy younger brother, Ty – leave the only home they’ve ever known. Setting off in a nondescript blue van, with a roll of cash, a map and a gun they shouldn’t have, this amateur crew embark on a life-changing odyssey into the unknown.

Along the way, the country surprises East. The blood on his hands isn’t the blood he expects. And he reaches places where only he can decide which way to go – or which person to become.

An intense, dangerous thriller delivered with a poignancy that will break your heart, Dodgers is the American road trip for our times. From the mean streets of south LA to the hinterlands of the American Midwest, the pared down, a raw prose of Beverly’s incredible debut will keep you spellbound, shocked and thrilled to the very last page.

‘Dark, edgy and riveting and, for all that, deeply, humanly serious, Dodgers is white knuckles for the mind.’  Robert Olen Butler   'A wickedly good amalgam of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Clockers that stands firmly on its own as a remarkable debut. A harrowing road trip into the heart of America that will shock you, move you, and leave you marveling at its desolate poetry.'  Richard Lange

I

THE BOXES

  The Boxes was all the boys knew; it was the only place. 

  In the street one car moved, between the whole vehicles and skeletal remains, creeping over paper and glass. 

  The boys stood guard. They watched light fill between the black houses separated only barely, like a row of loose teeth. Half the night they had been there: Fin taught that you did not make a boy stand yard all night. Half was right. To change in the middle kept them on their toes, Fin said. It kept them awake. It made them like men.