SAM MCPHEETERS DISCUSSES HIS NEW BOOK EXPLODED VIEW

Exploded View (Sky Horse Publishing)

It's 2050, and LAPD Detective Terri Pastuzka has drawn the short straw with her first assignment of the new decade. Someone has executed one of the city's countless immigrants, and no one (besides the usual besieged advocacy groups) seems to much care. Even Terri herself is already looking ahead to her next case before an unexpected development reveals there s far more to this corpse than meets the eye. 

And a lot already meets the eye. In a city immersed in augmented reality, the LAPD have their own superior network of high-tech eyewearPanOpts, the ultimate panopticonallowing Terri instant access to files and suspects and literal insertion into the crime scene using security footage captured from every angle the day the murder occurred. What started as a single homicide turns into a string of unsolved murders that tie together in frightening ways, leading Terri down a rabbit hole through Los Angeles s conflicting realitiesaugmented and virtual, fantastically rumored and harrowingly truetowards an impossible conclusion. 

Exploded View is the story of a city frozen in crisis, haunted by hardship and overwhelmed by refugees, where technology gives everyday citizens the power to digitally reshape news in real time, and where hard video evidence is impotent against the sheer, unrelenting power of belief. After all, when anyone can forge their own version of the truth, what use is any other reality? 

Praise for Exploded View

"A police procedural that says as much about the present day as it does about the culture of the near-future. With an ending that will leave you reeling, Exploded View forces you to question everything you think you know about reality."--Richard Cox, author of The Boys of Summer 

"The book's powerful themes, the relationship of police to policed, trust in governmental authority, trust in the media, immigrant tensions, and generational changeare sharply executed . . . [Exploded View] might just leave you hesitating before taking the next reblogged video at face value."--Kirkus 

"The writing is raw and the dialogue is real; Exploded View is not a story of what could be, but what may well be, and in the not-too-distant future, at that."--Steven John, author of Outrider and Three A.M.

Sam McPheeters was born in 1969 and raised in Albany, NY. Starting in 1989, he led several punk bands, including NY's Born Against. In the following 15 years, he sold nearly 100,000 records and toured 17 times across the US, Europe, and Japan. Since 2009, he has written for The Believer, Chicago Reader, Criterion, The Stranger, Vice, and The Village Voice. His first novel, The Loom of Ruin, was published in 2012.