Stephen Dobyns—whom Stephen King has described as "the best of the best"—is back with his newest novel Is Fat Bob Dead Yet?, a comic suspense novel about a small-time con operation, a pair of combative detectives, and the pride, revenge, and deception that guide us all—Richard Russo meets Elmore Leonard. In the seaport city of New London, Connecticut, and newcomer Connor Raposo has just witnessed a gruesome motorcycle accident on Bank Street. At least he thinks it was an accident. But then he sees a familiar man—who else would wear an Elvis pompadour in this day and age?—lurking around the crime scene. Where does Connor know him from? And why does everyone he knows keep showing up dead?
Author
Dobyns was raised in New Jersey, Michigan, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. He was educated at Shimer College, graduated from Wayne State University, and received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1967. He has worked as a reporter for the Detroit News. He has taught at various academic institutions, including Sarah Lawrence College, the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, the University of Iowa, Syracuse University, and Boston University. In much of his poetry and some works of non-genre fiction, Dobyns employs extended tropes, using the ridiculous and the absurd as vehicles to introduce more profound meditations on life, love, and art. He shies neither from the low nor from the sublime, and all in a straightforward narrative voice of reason. His journalistic training has strongly informed this voice.
