Esc&Ctrl
Steve Hollyman
Vincent wakes up in an apartment in New York City with no recollection of having arrived there. Back in the UK, his girlfriend, Emily, has been murdered. Guided by mysterious phone calls which lead him to a series of clues, he soon suspects he has travelled to New York to find Emily’s killer.
Meanwhile, an explicit video Emily made is going viral. When she shared it with Davison in a private forum, she never expected him to upload it. But she’s only ever spoken to him online, and he might not be who he says he is.
Framed by footnotes and annotations written by Ike A. Mafar and author Steve Hollyman, Esc&Ctrl is a metafictional murder mystery examining the loss of identity in the virtual world of the Internet; a self-begetting novel for the 21st Century.
Praise for Lairies
‘A helter-skelter whodunnit... delivering an insider critique of masculine bravado.’
– The Observer
‘Hollyman deftly portrays the realities of some of society’s most disenfranchised young men… never reads as a public service announcement but rather a direct indictment on how wider society has let so many young men fall through the cracks.’
– The Skinny
‘Lairies is an absolute triumph.’
– Kerry Hadley-Pryce, author of The Black Country
‘This is a brilliant book. Vital and violent.’
– Heidi James, author of The Sound Mirror
‘A bedtime story for a country in a coma.’
– Joe Stretch, author of Friction
‘Like Anthony Burgess and Chuck Palahniuk went on a pub crawl in twenty-first-century Britain, got out of their heads and decided to write a book together.’
– Nicholas Royle, author of Ornithology
‘I was gripped by Lairies in all its bloody, messy, terrifying glory and it left me with much to think about. Hollyman creates fully realised, believable and intriguing characters who, despite their actions, manage to keep a reader with them.’
– Northern Soul
About the Author
Steve Hollyman was born in Stoke-on-Trent and currently works as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing. He is a graduate of the Manchester Writing School, where he completed an MA and PhD. He is the vocalist and guitarist in the three-piece alternative rock band CreepJoint, whose most recent album A Generation of the Dark Heart was released in 2018. His debut novel, Lairies, was published by Influx Press in 2021.
Paperback ISBN: 9781910312698
Ebook ISBN: 9781910312704
Publication date: September 2022
Formats: Paperback / eBook