NEGATIVE GIRL

Martin Wade lived hard in his youth, but unlike many of his former bandmates and roadie friends, he didn't die young. Instead he hit the recovery path, cleaned up his life, and became a private investigator in a dying city in upstate New York.

When his heavily tattooed and scarred assistant Valerie sets up an appointment with a young woman who needs help keeping her biological father away from her, none of the three realize that the father is Martin's old bandmate, still using, and on a destructive path that will soon be headed straight for Martin's clean life. As Martin struggles, Valerie becomes increasingly obsessed with their new client's life. Then the client is found dead in a riverbank, and duty, nostalgia, and lifetimes of regret find Martin and Valerie on the case for the young woman's killer. As Martin struggles to hold onto his sobriety, Valerie becomes increasingly obsessed with their dead client. Alternating between Martin and Valerie's perspectives, Libby Cudmore's neo-noir NEGATIVE GIRL is an evocative, moody thriller about cities, movements, and people dying across America's forgotten spaces that calls to mind Kelly J Ford's Cottonmouths and Alex Segura's Pete Fernandez novels. Following her debut, The Big Rewind, a Kirkus-starred mystery with a lighter touch, this novel finds Cudmore in darker spaces that really allow her to shine. Libby Cudmore is the author of the hipster mystery The Big Rewind (William Morrow, 2016) and the Martin Wade PI series in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Her short fiction has been published in The Coachella Review, Bleed Error, The RS-500, Tough, The Big Click, PANK, Big Lucks, The Barrelhouse blog and others. She is the current co-host of the OST Party and Misbehavin' podcasts and the former co-host of The Shattered Shield podcast. She is the creator and host of the #RecordSaturday live-tweet series, spinning an array of old and new vinyl in a weekly interactive conversation.