Bombshell

Bombshell is a feminist nuclear thriller set twenty-five years after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, in which an alienated young Russian woman born in its shadow undertakes a road trip across the U.S., waging a guerrilla war against the nuclear industry and leaving in her wake a trail of destruction and assassinations. Obsessed with would-be Warhol assassin Valerie Solanas, Varyushka Cash recreates her atomic past through escalating violence and her one true goal: an assault on the Indian Point nuclear plant on the bank of the Hudson River. All along she is relentlessly pursued by the CIA, eager to capture Varyushka on charges of domestic terrorism. The cat-and-mouse chase leads to a final showdown in a decimated and irradiated New York, there on the cusp of a frightening new future.

The initial draft of Bombshell was completed five months before the Fukushima catastrophe, written from the author’s morbid suspicion that the twenty-fifth anniversary of catastrophe at Chernobyl, Pripyat, and beyond would be marked by an echo in the present, shadowed by the real threat present in our unguarded and deteriorating nuclear facilities. Bombshell is a combustible and commercial step forward by one of our most creative and intellectual writers today.“Reich's novel is chock full of explosive ideas conveyed with radioactive prose. His heroine Varyuska Cash makes Lisbeth Salander look like a dimwitted Mary Poppins. This is dangerous fiction - handle with extreme caution.” —Isaac Adamson, Edgar Award Finalist, Complication

"The feminist heroine is a fresh twist on the thriller genre." —KirkusJames Reich is a writer and co-founder of the post-punk band Venus Bogardus. He was born in England and relocated to New Mexico in 2009. He is currently a contributing faculty member at Santa Fe University of Art and Design. He is the author of I, Judas.