The Carrion Birds: A Novel

The Carrion Birds from Urban Waite, author of the highly acclaimed The Terror of Living, is a remarkable work of literary noir.

Hired gun Ray Lamar is ready to put his past behind him. He wants to see his twelve-year-old son and start a new life—away from the violence of the last ten years. One last heist will take him there. All he has to do is steal a rival’s stash. Simple, easy, clean. 

But when things start to go very wrong, Ray realizes the path to redemption isn’t always easy.

A soulful tale of violence, vengeance, and contrition, The Carrion Birds is an elegant depiction of one man’s last chance to make things right.

Ray Lamar has made some mistakes. He's good at hurting people—the dead wife he failed, the young son he abandoned, the victims who stand in his boss's way. But Ray's tired of being that man. He wants to go home to Coronado, New Mexico, to see his boy and make a new life far from the violence of the past. One last job will take him there. All he has to do is steal a rival's stash. Simple and easy.

Ray knows there's no such thing as easy, and that simple plan has quickly become a catastrophe. Now the runners who have always moved quietly through this desert border town want vengeance. To stop a bloodbath and maybe save his own soul, Ray must figure out how to make it right. But for a man like Ray Lamar, there is only one way. . . .

“The Carrion Birds is as muscular and laconic as anything by Cormac McCarthy, yet it crackles with humanity. A-” - Entertainment Weekly

“Powerful . . . Ray and Tom are well-developed, red-blooded characters, each with a full load of flaws and ambiguities. Each has deep regrets, and each yearns for a shot at redemption. . . . The Carrion Birds is a bracing ride, and it’s a pleasure to see new changes rung on classic themes, especially when they’re done this well.” - Seattle Times

“[Ray] opens a Pandora’s box of chain reactions that wreak havoc on a small southwestern town, havoc that is described in such graphically poetic prose that it occasionally makes the hair on even a cynical noir fan’s head stand on end. . . . [The Carrion Birds] is an even purer distillation of noir. . . . the finale will remind readers of the equally inevitable end to Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers.” - Booklist (starred review)

“One could draw a line that commences at a place in the midst of John Steinbeck’s shorter fiction, continues through Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, and ends at The Carrion Birds . . . Waite’s ability to demonstrate the obvious and major weak points in Ray’s plan, even as such are layered over by Ray’s blind optimism, is pure genius. . . . The dust and despair that infuses the book’s backdrop is so thick that it almost rises off the page. Ironically, the individual who is the ultimate catalyst of the death and destruction that propels the story is not directly presented until practically the end of the book, though he is presented to devastating effect nonetheless. This literary style point is but one of many elements that makes The Carrion Birds another triumph for Waite, with the promise of more and even better to come.” - Bookreporter.com

“A lean and mean, modern-day noir western filled with complex characters and situations . . . hauntingly dark and elegiac writing . . . a candidate for best crime book of 2013.” - New York Journal of Books

“[A] searing western noir. Three people face terrifying moral choices as they each wish for what they can’t have: life as it was before their small border town . . . was doomed by its dying oil economy.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[A] searing western noir. Three people face terrifying moral choices as they each wish for what they can’t have: life as it was before their small border town . . . was doomed by its dying oil economy.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“The Carrion Birds is as muscular and laconic as anything by Cormac McCarthy, yet it crackles with humanity. A-” - Entertainment Weekly

“In the tradition of No Country for Old Men, Urban Waite has written a nail-biter that takes off from the get-go and never stops, a book chock full of memorable characters and kick-ass writing.” - Tom Franklin on The Terror of Living

“A hell of a good novel, relentlessly paced and beautifully narrated. There’s just no let-up. Waite’s style is tight and taut. . . . Strong narrative voice, auspicious debut. . . . Awfully glad I read this one.” - Stephen King on The Terror of Living

“A smart, swiftly-paced and bloody Western for our moment. Urban Waite is a writer who won’t let a reader wander away—he keeps you reading, and reading, and rewards all your attention with a powerhouse story and prose to match.” - Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter's Bone on The Terror of Living

“Opens with gentle beauty, calm before a bloody storm, before building intensity with swift, jarring, and confident storytelling power. . . . Readers—including this one—will certainly be following Urban Waite for years to come.” - Michael Koryta, author of So Cold the River on The Terror of Living

“Waite masterfully cuts away all fat in this relentlessly hypnotic tale of double-cross and vengeance. He has given us a lean and mean, modern-day noir western filled with complex characters and situations. The hauntingly dark and elegiac writing resonates throughout the book, reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. Surely a candidate for best crime book of 2013.” - New York Journal of Books

“Waite writes with grace and poignancy and keen comprehension of hard men in hard circumstances . . . [The] narrative rages as a perfect torrent of violence flooding toward its inevitable conclusion. Fierce and lyrical.” - Kirkus Reviews

“One fine specimen . . . with more artistry than would seem possible in a conventional thriller.” - New York Times Book Review on The Terror of Living

“Waite writes with grace and poignancy and keen comprehension of hard men in hard circumstances . . . [The] narrative rages as a perfect torrent of violence flooding toward its inevitable conclusion. Fierce and lyrical.” - Kirkus Reviews

“In the tradition of No Country for Old Men, Urban Waite has written a nail-biter that takes off from the get-go and never stops, a book chock full of memorable characters and kick-ass writing. Clear your calendar before reading this one, folks, because once you start there’s no stopping until the end, which arrived much too quickly for this reader. A smashing debut.” - Tom Franklin on The Terror of Living

“It’s getting harder and harder to tell the good guys from the bad guys in a modern western, of which Urban Waite’s first novel is one fine specimen. . . . more artistry than would seem possible in a conventional thriller. . . . Waite is most eloquent when he’s probing the interior lives of the men locked in this contest of will and endurance.” - New York Times Book Review on The Terror of Living

“The defining quality of Urban Waite’s gripping existential thriller is an elegant sparseness, which inevitably recalls Cormac McCarthy.” - Financial Times on The Terror of Living

“A hell of a good novel, relentlessly paced and beautifully narrated. There’s just no let-up. Waite’s style is tight and taut. . . . Strong narrative voice, auspicious debut. . . . Awfully glad I read this one.” - Stephen King on The Terror of Living

“The Terror of Living is a smart, swiftly-paced and bloody Western for our moment. Urban Waite is a writer who won’t let a reader wander away—he keeps you reading, and reading, and rewards all your attention with a powerhouse story and prose to match.” - Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter's Bone on The Terror of Living