The Angels of Catastrophe

Ricky Durrutti is a small-time crook with a short biography and a long rap sheet. He has "lived long enough to make a lot of mistakes but not long enough to fix any of them." As the novel opens, a policeman is gunned down in San Francisco's Mission District, and the weapon is traced back to Durrutti. Unless he can find Jimmy Ramirez, the guy he gave the gun to, and figure out who the real killer is, Durrutti is a dead man. From drag queens to Jewish gangsters, Salvadoran gangs to heroin addicts, everyone seems interested in making sense of the murder.

Peter Plate taught himself to write fiction during eight years spent squatting in abandoned buildings. He is the author of seven previous novels, including One Foot Off the Gutter (1995), Snitch Factory (1997), Police and Thieves (1999), and Angels of Catastrophe (2001). Plate lives in San Francisco, where, at spoken word concerts or readings, he has been known to speak his novels from memory.