Synopses & Reviews
The summer is anything but humorous for Boston comic Mark Winslow as he struggles to break into the Provincetown club circuit. A public fight makes him the prime suspect in a grisly murder, and his choice seems simple: find the killer or be charged with the crime. Mark tries to unravel a mystery involving Boston bluebloods, a defunct prep school, a kidnapped child, and a Norse-inspired cult complete with rune stone and Tree of Life hung with bells and umbilical cords. Somehow, a disappearance eighty years in the past and a famous old painting, The Fisher Boy, are casting a very contemporary pall of evil over all of the people in Mark's life. They include: Miriam Hilliard, the jewelry maker/heiress who refuses to name the father of her three-year-old daughter; Edward Babineaux, the seductive runaway found sleeping on the beach in back of a philanthropist's mansion; Roberto Schreiber, Marks' volatile actor colleague; and the reclusive Lucas Mikkonen. This book is also a portrait of a summer resort, with its craft shops and nude beaches, art galleries and clam shacks, where June brings new transients—actors, waiters, con men, and street children claiming to be from a visiting tall ship—and fresh undercurrents of sex and risk.
Review
Like Provincetown itself, THE FISHER BOY (Poisoned Pen, $24.95), a first novel by Stephen Anable set in this resort town on Cape Cod, is gaudy and gay a and way over the top. Itas not enough that the place has been invaded by a militaristic evangelical sect. The streets are also crawling with menacing children from a cult that grows amazing fruit and vegetables and models itself on ancient Nordic culture....Anable has given his earnest sleuth a genuine sense of wonder at the beauty of the Cape and a rare ability to hold conversations with sad, wounded people. His is a voice worth hearing again. -- Marilyn Stasio, New York Times, May 18 2008
Synopsis
Spiraling off the tip of Cape Cod, Provincetown has long been a place of escape, new beginnings, and diverse communities. Famous as an art colony, known for the Cape Cod School, its gallery scene is vibrant. Gay life is everywhere. Boston comic Mark Winslow has arrived this summer with a group of fellow improv actors ready to break into Provincetown's club circuit. It should be a carefree summer, but currents swirl beneath the sunny surface. Does the tall ship out in the harbor herald an unusually large crowd of Scandinavian tourists? If not, who are the blond and ragged visitors seen everywhere? Then, at a philanthropist's dinner opening the season, Mark gets into a very public fight with the son of local bluebloods--an old school friend. It makes him the prime suspect when the lawyer is later savagely murdered out on the beach. Though he stumbles from the scene, Mark thinks his choice is simple: find the killer or be charged with the crime. The Fisher Boy is Stephen Anable's debut novel.
Synopsis
Spiraling from the tip of Cape Cod, Provincetown has long been a place of freedom, escape, diversity, and risk. A gay resort, an art colony, and a working fishing port, it is at once gritty and hedonistic, beautiful and complex.
Boston comic Mark Winslow arrives with his troupe of improv actors ready to break into the Provincetown club circuit. But the town and the regionaseared by drought and caught in the culture waraare anything but peaceful this summer. Does the tall ship in the harbor bear an unusually large number of Scandinavian tourists? If not, who are the blond and ragged people insisting they are associated with it?
Then a public fight makes Mark the prime suspect in the grisly butchering of a Boston blueblood. Mark believes his choice is simple: find the killer or be charged with the crime.
Amid the clam shacks and craft shops, art galleries and nude beaches, undercurrents are pulling at the surface of normality, like riptides beneath seemingly calm water. Could the disappearance of a famous painter 80 years in the pastaand the story of his masterpiece, The Fisher Boyasomehow lie at the center of the whirlpool of evil threatening to extinguish Markas life? The Fisher Boy is Stephen Anableas debut novel.
Synopsis
Boston comic Mark Winslow arrives with his troupe of improv actors ready to break into the Provincetown club circuit. A public fight makes him the prime suspect in the grisly butchering of a Boston blueblood. Mark believes his choice is simple: find the killer or be charged with the crime.
About the Author
Stephen H. Anable was born in Boston and graduated from Stanford and Harvard universities. His short fiction and essays have been published in magazines and anthologies. At various time during his life, he has been a standup comic, a journalist, an actor, a social worker, a scriptwriter, and the communications coordinator at a cemetery. He has two sons and lives in Massachusetts.