Jack of Spades: A Tale of Suspense - Brossura

One of the Seattle Times' 10 best mysteries of the year
A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Mystery & Thriller for Spring

Just when you think you’ve got her all figured out, Joyce Carol Oates sneaks up behind and confounds you yet again. She does it with a wicked flourish in Jack of Spades.” Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

Few writers better illuminate the mind’s most disturbing corners. Oates tightens her silken noose around our necks with the story of a mainstream mystery writer who secretly writes shocking, violent, explicitly sexual thrillers. This hidden life implodes, and he becomes increasingly unhinged after a bizarre woman sues him, claiming that he steals her ideas literally, by breaking into her house to pilfer manuscripts.” Adam Woog, Seattle Times, The 10 best mysteries of 2015”

Suspenseful, fast-moving.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Entertaining, page-turning . . . [A] perfect summer read." Tampa Bay Times

Oates’s latest suspense tale follows the psychic takeover of Andrew J. Rush . . . by the secret persona he uses to pen lurid genre novels. For added fun, Oates garnishes this machismo-laden struggle with a leavening pinch of one of her favorite feminist topics: witchcraft.” O Magazine, The Season’s Best Mysteries & Thrillers”

"Sleek and suspenseful . . . Readers are sure to be gripped and unsettled by [Oates's] depiction of a seemingly mild-mannered character whose psychopathology simmers frighteningly close to the surface.” Publishers Weekly (boxed and starred review)

A great psychological noir novel . . . [A] tour de force . . . This tale of suspense makes for another high-caliber Oatesian outing, displaying flair, noir sophistication, and [Stephen] King-like flourishes.” Library Journal (starred review)

A chilling thriller . . . Gothic in its paranoia, but thoroughly modern in its observations on fame’s destructive powers.” Bustle

A mystery writer slowly becomes subsumed by his dark alter ego in Oates’ tale of literary madness . . . With its homages to Poe . . . and the horror masters Jack of Spades so admires, this latest unsettling and chilling thriller from Oates does not disappoint.” Kirkus Reviews

"Delightful." Times (UK)

Joyce Carol Oates is known for her psychological thrillers, and she does not disappoint with her latest, Jack of Spades . . . Oates creates characters that make you think about the potential madness in others, something that, in the end, turns out to be more than a little scary.” Missourian

Playful . . . With Jack of Spades Ms. Oates places her cards on the table and shows us a Royal Straight Flush.” Three Guys One Book

A very good read . . . Oates does not let her fans down and she undoubtedly will pick up new ones with her latest effort.” Bookreporter

A fast-paced read filled with high drama and the expertly-rendered delineation of a writer’s descent into madness.” Lonesome Reader

Joyce Carol Oates is the author of such national bestsellers as The Falls,Blonde, and We Were the Mulvaneys. Her other titles for The Mysterious Press includeHigh Crime Area and The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares, which won the 2011 Bram Stoker Award for Short Horror Fiction. She is also the recipient of the National Book Award, forthem, and the 2010 President’s Medal for the Humanities.