Manchester, 1976. A small boy finds a body in an alley behind a legendary music hall. Forty-one years later, he hears reports of another murder, the victim covered in the same ritualistic markings. Is it the work of a cult? A coincidence? Or is Otis Oliver’s memory simply playing tricks on him? His investigation will lead him away from his comfortable life into a devilish world ruled by a woman he will come to know as Mary.

Mary Monster is not a book for everyone. It’s a mashup of Gothic horror and noir mystery, riddled with hundreds of references to Romantic poetry and New Wave music. It’s populated by pop idols and undead artists. And it’s written in a purposefully artificial mashup of Mancunian, Manhattan and Elizabethan slang.

But for a select group of readers, this is a clever, literary supernatural thriller that will blow you away. It’s simply one of a kind.

“In this ambitious novel, Ingwalson’s prose slips in and out of Otis’ Mancunian dialect, flecked with rich allusions to rock, literature, and various Colorado locales. Otis’ voice is noirish in a way that will strike some readers as lyric and others as a bit labored… This is an elegant mystery in the mode of Thomas Pynchon or Jonathan Lethem, invested more in the journey than the outcome.” – Kirkus Reviews