Jess Walter Books In Order

Citizen Vince

At 1:59 a.m. in Spokane, Washington eight days before the 1980 presidential election Vince Camden pockets his stash of stolen credit cards and drops by an all night poker game before heading to his witness protection job dusting crullers at Donut Make You Hungry. Along with a neurotic hooker girlfriend, this is the total sum of Vince’s new life. But when a familiar face shows up in town, Vince realizes his sordid past is still too close behind him. During the next unforgettable week, he’ll negotiate a coast to coast maze of obsessive cops, eager politicians, and assorted mobsters only to find that redemption might exist, of all places, in the voting booth.

The Zero

The Zero is a groundbreaking novel, a darkly comic snapshot of our times that is already being compared to the works of Franz Kafka and Joseph Heller.

From its opening pages when hero cop Brian Remy wakes up to find he’s shot himself in the head novelist Jess Walter takes us on a harrowing tour of a city and a country shuddering through the aftershocks of a devastating terrorist attack. As the smoke slowly clears, Remy finds that his memory is skipping, lurching between moments of lucidity and days when he doesn’t seem to be living his own life at all. The landscape around him is at once fractured and oddly familiar: a world dominated by a Machiavellian mayor known as ‘The Boss,’ and peopled by gawking celebrities, anguished policemen peddling First Responder cereal, and pink real estate divas hyping the spoils of tragedy. Remy himself has a new girlfriend he doesn’t know, a son who pretends he’s dead, and an unsettling new job chasing a trail of paper scraps for a shadowy intelligence agency known as the Department of Documentation. Whether that trail will lead Remy to an elusive terror cell or send him circling back to himself is only one of the questions posed by this provocative yet deeply human novel.

From a novelist of astounding talent, The Zero is an extraordinary story of how our trials become our transgressions, of how we forgive ourselves and whether or not we should.

Over Tumbled Graves

A Riverbank littered with bodies. A city under siege by crime solving ‘experts.’ One young detective struggles to discover the truth…
and preserve her sanity. Spokane, Washington: a bustling city split by hurtling white water falls. During a routine drug bust, Detective Caroline Mabry finds herself on a narrow bridge over the falls, face to face with a brutal murderer named Lenny Ryan. Within hours, the body of a young prostitute is found nearby, dumped along the riverbank. Then another. And another. Soon Caroline and her cynical mentor Alan Dupree are thrown headlong into the search for a serial murderer police have nicknamed the Southbank Strangler. But while Caroline hunts a killer, he may also be hunting her. What follows is a novel that turns the usual serial killer story on its head, that confronts America’s burgeoning fascination with psychopathology and murder and stares it down. Through one long, bloody summer, Caroline and Dupree remain one step behind a madman who seems to be communicating by killing women and growing bolder with each new body. And when Spokane is overrun by headline grabbing FBI profilers, statisticians, and TV producers, the detectives are forced to grapple with the ever hungrier serial murder industry. Before it’s all over, Caroline and Dupree uncover some hard truths about their city, their profession, and each other. And Caroline finds herself back at the river, facing an evil far more alarming than the one she thought she was chasing. Rich with the darkly muted colors of the Pacific Northwest skies, peopled with characters of extraordinary depth and dimension, Over Tumbled Graves marks the debut of a novelist with unusual insight into the human psyche.

Land of the Blind

Jess Walter’s widely acclaimed first novel, Over Tumbled Graves, paired the plot of a first rate thriller with writing of exceptional intelligence and human insight. Now, in Land of the Blind, Walter brings back police detective Caroline Mabry and pits her in a battle of wits against a mysterious yet oddly familiar figure who is dragged into her precinct house one Friday night, seeming disoriented and wearing an eye patch.’I’d like to confess, he says. But he insists on writing out his confession in longhand. And, he warns her, it may take a while. Over the next forty eight hours, the stranger admits to far more than a crime. He confesses an entire life: a wry and haunting tale of poverty and politics, of obsession and revenge. And as he writes, Caroline pushes herself to near collapse, racing against the clock to investigate not merely a murder but the story of two men’s darkly intertwined lives…
and to find the body that awaits her, somewhere in the city. The result is a novel that blends suspense with rich characterization and irresistible storytelling, one that speaks deeply to the bonds and compromises we make as children and the fatal errors we can make at any moment in our lives.

Before Her (By:Jacqueline Woodson)

The young detective team from the public television program, Ghostwriter, is on the case when a prized family heirloom and a rare copy of Frederick Douglass’s autobiography disappear at a family reunion.

The Financial Lives of the Poets

Meet Matt Prior. He’s about to lose his job, his wife, his house, maybe his mind. Unless…
In the winning and utterly original novels Citizen Vince and The Zero, Jess Walter ‘a ridiculously talented writer’ New York Times painted an America all his own: a land of real, flawed, and deeply human characters coping with the anxieties of their times. Now, in his warmest, funniest, and best novel yet, Walter offers a story as real as our own lives: a tale of overstretched accounts, misbegotten schemes, and domestic dreams deferred. A few years ago, small time finance journalist Matthew Prior quit his day job to gamble everything on a quixotic notion: a Web site devoted to financial journalism in the form of blank verse. When his big idea and his wife’s eBay resale business ends with a whimper and a garage full of unwanted figurines, they borrow and borrow, whistling past the graveyard of their uncertain dreams. One morning Matt wakes up to find himself jobless, hobbled with debt, spying on his wife’s online flirtation, and six days away from losing his home. Is this really how things were supposed to end up for me, he wonders: staying up all night worried, driving to 7 Eleven in the middle of the night to get milk for his boys, and falling in with two local degenerates after they offer him a hit of high grade mari*juana? Or, he thinks, could this be the solution to all my problems? Following Matt in his weeklong quest to save his marriage, his sanity, and his dreams, The Financial Lives of the Poets is a hysterical, heartfelt novel about how we can reach the edge of ruin and how we can begin to make our way back.

Every Knee Shall Bow

What went wrong at Ruby Ridge? Why was Randy Weaver’s son fatally shot in the back? How could the FBI justify shooting a woman as she held her infant child? Why were the Weavers given a $3.1 million settlement by the U.S. Government? Was there an FBI cover up and how high did it go? Every Knee Shall Bow answers the critical questions that cut to the heart of the most explosive issues in the United States today. The Weaver Family took to the woods to escape what they believed was a sinful world on the brink of Armageddon. But Randy Weaver’s indictment on a firearms violation escalated into a deadly shoot out at his northern Idaho cabin. Before it was over, a federal marshal, Weaver’s wife and his only son were dead. Now, featuring exclusive interviews with key figures on both sides, Pulitzer Prize finalist Jess Walter objectively reconstructs all the riveting events in this controversial case.

In Contempt

For more than a year, Christopher Darden argued tirelessly, giving voice to the victims in the 0.J. Simpson murder trial. In this gripping account of one man’s extraordinary career, Darden offers an unflinching look at a justice system imperiled by racism and celebrity privilege. Now, out of the sensational frenzy of ‘the trial of the century’ comes a haunting memoir of duty, justice, and thepowerful undertow of American racism. Christopher Darden’s In Contempt is an unflinching look at a justice system kidnapped by a racist cop, shameless defense lawyers, a starstruck judge, and a dysfunctional jury. It shows what the television cameras could not:Behind the scenes meetings where Darden tried to determine whether Detective Mark Fuhrman was a racist cop The deteriorating relationships between the defense and prosecution teams, with taunting, baiting, and a pushing match between Darden and SimpsonA starstruck judge who let the case get out of control while he collected hourglas*ses from fans and invited celebrities into his chambers The candid factors behind Darden’s controversial decision for Simpson to try on the infamous gloveThe dysfunctional jury who was forced to make a landmark legal decisionThe intimate relationship between Darden and Marcia ClarkA stunning masterpiece told with brutal honesty and courage, In Contempt is the rare story of one man who refused to choose between his heritage and his humanity.