The Accidental Pallbearer

“Frank Lentricchia’s new novel ranks as entertainment of a high order – funny, fast-moving and hot-blooded. It’s also the kind of novel that will appeal to readers who like their fiction to carry depth and range.” –Don DeLillo

“Bravissimo!” —Lisa Scottoline

“The Accidental Pallbearer is a brilliant piece of fiction, and a page turner to boot, able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the best writing in America today.” –Jay Parini

“The Accidental Pallbearer deserves to be read alongside the best literary detective fiction of our time. Lentricchia’s protagonist is the anti-hero par excellence – you can’t put him down, either physically or emotionally – whose only equal is Fabio Montale from the great Marseilles trilogy by Jean-Claude Izzo.” –John R. MacArthur, publisher, Harper’s

“Vivid and unnerving … Eliot Conte is an instant original.” — The Washington Post

”Lentricchia captures the feel of upstate New York (Richard Russo territory) and of Italian American culture within a familiar genre, with predictable grit and wit. We hope to see more of Conte and perhaps of his promising romantic interest, a Troy policewoman.” – Booklist

“There’s a Quentin Tarantino masculinity to this story of a private investigator known for solving knotty problems in not-quite-lawful ways.” –The Charlotte Observer

“More than a thriller … Lentricchia’s prose soars…” — The Raleigh-Durham Herald-Sun

“Lentricchia’s latest work, in my opinion his finest, certainly the one most accessible to a wide audience, is entitled “The Accidental Pallbearer,” a detective-crime-Mafioso novel set in Utica, full of bits and pieces of authentic Utica history, altered and molded into a totally fictional story that is fast-paced and thrilling, scene after scene. It has the hard-bitten diction and action of “Film Noir” (and I do believe it is destined to be made into a film). Central to the novel is the conflict of family loyalty versus family disintegration that makes the best of Italian-American fiction so riveting.” — The Union Observer Dispatch


Praise for The Knifemen and Johnny Critelli

“[Scenes that are] somber or funny or lose-your-lunch ugly….The sabotage and sadness are real, and the language out of the streets and kitchens and bedrooms is obscenely authentic.” –Entertainment Weekly

“Lentricchia has fashioned two short novels that display a rousing capacity for language and a gritty sense of the contemporary male mind.” –Publishers Weekly

“Brutal and uncompromising, brilliant and desperate.” —Rolling Stone

“Original and lively. . . Frank Lentricchia is that rare thing, a professor of English with writing talent.” —Frank Kermode