A sharp mystery that is as chaotic as it is cathartic.
Connie Keen will be the first to admit that he is pretty messed up and has been for some time. True, his late father was into bikes and drugs, his mom was a partier in her younger days, his sister keeps her distance, and his older twin brothers’ habits have left them disabled. But it was the death of another brother, Kevin, that drove Connie into alcohol’s comforting arms. Kevin accidentally fell from the Ocean Beach Pier while hanging out with friends, and Connie hasn’t been the same since. Years have passed, but he’s never loosened his grip on the bottle, and Connie has come to prefer things just as they are. He pontificates on the strange deaths that are the ultimate payout in life’s dark lottery, works occasionally, drinks profusely, and avoids the unfamiliar. And that is exactly what Lucy Dove is. Unfamiliar. A riddle. A risk. But how much of a threat could there be in a wisp of a girl battling her own addiction? As it turns out, she has news that completely throws Connie’s drunken equilibrium off. “Your brother was pushed.” Pushed? He races back through the stages of grief but stops short of acceptance. He will never accept that somebody might have gotten away with his brother’s murder.
An unabashed story about all the ways we carry our losses, The Dark Lottery is a sharp mystery that is as chaotic as it is cathartic. Connie’s turbulent journey takes audiences through layers of addiction, jagged emotional scars, relentless anxiety, unavoidable consequences, and karmic reckoning. Mike Stetz writes with an even hand, a casual voice, and a darkly humorous eye, even as his protagonist struggles to keep his head above water. Whether drinking to fumbles or choosing electrolyte-rich mixers to prevent dehydration, Connie is an alcoholic everyman stumbling through a mystery he didn’t ask for. Connie is not the kind of guy who leaves a drink unfinished, a freakish death unmourned, or a bully unchecked, so readers will relate to his flawed but fiercely human sense of justice. Down-to-earth friends help him along and add a compassionate touch to a story mired in tragedy’s cold aftermath. Readers looking for an intriguing mystery will be impressed with the author’s ability to take what feels like a familiar trope and twist everything into a sardonic puzzle that slips into place at exactly the right moment. Prickly and raw, yet strangely tender, The Dark Lottery is a pebble-in-your-shoe novel that is impossible to ignore.
