Jack of Spades - Joyce Carol Oates

From one of the most highly regarded writers of our generation, Jack of Spades is an exquisite, psychologically complex thriller about the opposing forces within the mind of one ambitious writer and the line between genius and madness.

Andrew J. Rush has achieved the kind of critical and commercial success most authors only dream about: he has a top agent and publisher in New York, and his twenty-eight mystery novels have sold millions of copies around the world. He also has a loving wife and three grown children and is a well-known philanthropist in his small New Jersey town. But Rush is hiding a dark secret. Under the pseudonym “Jack of Spades,” he pens another string of novels— dark potboilers that are violent, lurid, even masochistic. These are novels that the refined, upstanding Andrew Rush wouldn’t be caught reading, let alone writing. But when one day his daughter comes across a Jack of Spades novel that he has carelessly left out, she begins to ask questions. Meanwhile, Rush receives a court summons in the mail explaining that a local woman has accused him of plagiarizing her own self-published fiction. Rush’s reputation, career, and family life all come under threat—and unbidden, in the back of his mind, the Jack of Spades starts thinking ever more evil thoughts.

PRAISE
“A writer's secret pseudonymous identity becomes a conduit for his murderous dark side in Oates's sleek and suspenseful excursion into the literary macabre . . . Although she nods to a number of Poe's classic tales—especially “The Black Cat" and "William Wilson—the story's modem spin is entirely of her own clever invention. Readers are sure to be gripped and unsettled by her depiction of a seemingly mild-mannered character whose psychopathology simmers frighteningly close to the surface.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred, boxed review)

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

“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

“A great psychological noir novel, which also serves as a homage to Stephen King . . . [A] tour de force . . . This tale of suspense makes for another high-caliber Oatesian outing, displaying flair, noir sophistication, and King-like flourishes.”
—Seamus Scanlon, Library Journal (starred review)