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Pirata

A Novel

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

From 21-Jump Street writer and series creator Patrick Hasburgh, a part thriller, part family novel about an ex-pat American living and surfing in Mexico, the family he loves, and the murder he witnesses, in the vein of Don Winslow's The Dawn Patrol.

"It's rare to find a novel that's so harrowing, funny and touching at the same time, but Patrick Hasburgh somehow pulls it off. His surf-bum narrator is a new classic—think of Philip Marlowe, on a longboard." —Carl Hiaasen, New York Times bestselling author of Razor Girl

"Fueled by equal parts humor and suspense, Pirata makes for a fast and satisfying read." — Kem Nunn, author of National Book Award Finalist Tapping the Source

""Going straight at the stuff that scares you is good advice. I just didn't have the courage to do it..."—Nick Lutz

In a former life, Nick Lutz, sold cars in the Golden State. He had a wife and a young son, and they struggled along until Nick was shot in the head when a potential customer hijacked the car he was demonstrating. The incident sets off a bad-luck domino fall, and he loses an eye, his job, his family, and, eventually, his self-respect.

With nothing left, Nick heads for Mexico, where he sheds his former self among an eclectic group of expats and locals, who fondly name him "Pirata" on account of his eye patch. There on the beaches of Sabanita, Nick and his buddy Winsor drink, surf, and—most of all—escape, buoyed away from their pasts on south swells and Tecate. Nothing epic. That is until Winsor's girlfriend, Meagan, ends their abusive relationship and flees with her two boys to the safety and solace of Nick's beachside casita. A monsoon season fling of convenience turns into a torrid love affair as new loyalties and dark secrets are shaped into something like a family. But when the local policía struggle to identify a body that has washed up in the surf, Nick realizes his secrets—and sins—have caught up with him. And there are dangerous new surprises that have yet to roll in with the tide. . . .

A gifted storyteller, Hasburgh drops readers into the middle of a gripping, heartwarming, viscerally compelling page turner. At once tender and deadly hysterical, Pirata is a novel readers won't soon forget.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 14, 2018
      Former California car salesman Nick Lutz, the narrator of this thoughtful thriller from Hasburgh (Aspen Pulp), is called Pirata by the locals of Sabinita, Mexico, for the patch he wears over the eye he lost in a carjacking—the first in a series of misfortunes that led to the loss of his job, a lasting break from his wife and son, and his move to Mexico. In Sabinita, Nick uses his one passion, surfing, to cover up his emotional pain. When Meagan, the girlfriend of his surfing buddy, Winsor, puts a claw hammer in Winsor’s skull to protect her son Jade from being molested by Winsor, Lutz reluctantly agrees to get rid of the body. As he becomes more involved with Meagan, Jade, and her other son, Obsidian, their menage looks to be turning into a family. But Meagan leaves with Jade’s father, and the federales and the FBI enter to further complicate his life after an unidentified body washes ashore. Hasburgh tells a moving human story, but the surfeit of surfing lingo may bewilder readers unfamiliar with the sport. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Agency.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Nick Lutz is an expat living in a sleepy Mexican surf town whose eye patch is the only apparent sign of the attack he suffered in his previous life in California. Narrator Charlie Thurston portrays Nick eloquently--surely a heavy-drinking surf bum would not be this articulate, but, happily, the listener is spared the surfer dude clich�s. Nick helps a fraught woman dispose of the body of her abusive boyfriend and precariously creates a cobbled-together family with her teenage sons. Thurston narrates most of the voices with a straight delivery, lending an accent to the Mexican police during their probing questions about the gringo body that washed up on the shore. Even listeners who don't surf can enjoy Thurston's lyrical treatment of the poetic descriptions of hanging ten. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
    • Booklist

      May 1, 2018
      Nick Lutz is a noir hero in excelsis. He's down on his luck, hiding out in a hangdog community in Mexico. Years ago he was shot in the eye, and the bullet came out the back of his head. He's given to seizures. During a bad one, he drove into a tree and saw his son being carried away with a broken neck. Now he's complicit in a killing. An FBI agent appears. Then, suddenly, the darkness recedes, and we're transported into a surfing novel, awash in hollow overheads and pitchy barrels; just as suddenly, the surf's down, and Nick is off trying to be a father to two children of a single mother. Here's the curious thing: these interludes are so compellingly written that even the most noir-hungry readers will find themselves almost forgetting to miss the dark stuff. Surfing and crime have come together before, most notably in Kem Nunn's cult classic Tapping the Source (1984) and in Don Winslow's The Dawn Patrol (2008) and The Gentleman's Hour (2011), but Hasburgh ups the ante by adding domestic drama into the mix. A strange brew, but it works.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

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  • English

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