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A Novel
by Giles Blunt
Eight years ago, Owen Maxwell was saved from a foster home by the arrival of his uncle Max from England. Once a promising Shakespearean actor, Magnus “Max” Maxwell has since put his dramatic skills to new use: a master of disguise, a virtuoso of foreign dialects, and a performer to his core, he has become an extremely successful gentleman thief. Every summer, Max and Owen take a road trip across the United States, pulling off elaborate robberies along the way. But this year is different. Their first, dazzlingly executed summer heist captures the interest of the Subtractors.
Long believed an urban myth, the Subtractors are a gang of vicious thieves who prey on other thieves. They will abduct a fellow crook known to have completed a lucrative job and proceed to “subtract” parts of his body until he tells them where they can find the loot. “No such creature,” Max says, when Owen first suspects that they may be in the Subtractors’ sights. But in this, as in so many things, Max will prove to be disastrously wrong.
"[Blunt] never develops any of the characters beyond the initial stereotypes." - Publishers Weekly
"A pleasant if somewhat forgettable read." - Library Journal
"For most of this violent, synthetic romp's running time ... its patron saint is Carl Hiaasen. The result isn't half bad, just less distinctive than Blunt's tales of Algonquin Bay Detective John Cardinal." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Teens will fall in love with this handsome, insightful 18-year-old and his questionable girlfriend, and will be charmed by this quirky, fast-paced tale." - School Library Journal (Adult Books for Teens)
This information about No Such Creature was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Giles Blunt was born in 1952 in Windsor, Ontario, and grew up in North Bay,
Ontario. He describes his parents as being "so
English that the space on their passports for citizenship could only be filled
in 'British Beyond Belief.'" He spent most of his education at a Catholic
boys' school called Scollard Hall, moving to a "regular school", Algonquin
Composite, for his last two years.
His career started with poetry which was published in various publications
including Grain and Poetry
Canada. Then he fell in love with movies and decided to write
screenplays and, in 1980, moved to New York, where he lived
for the next 22 years. He says, "living in New York gave me enough
distance from northern Ontario to see it through a very long lens....
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Courage - a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.
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