Rogues

Bradley Denton

World Fantasy Award and John W. Campbell Memorial Award–winner Bradley Denton was born in 1958, grew up in Kansas, and took an M.A. in creative writing from the University of Kansas. He sold his first story in 1984, and soon became a regular contributor to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His first novel, Wrack and Roll, was published in 1986, and was followed by Lunatics, Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede, Blackburn, and Laughin’ Boy. He’s perhaps best known for his series of Blackburn stories and novels about an eccentric serial killer, but he won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for his novel Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede, and his two-volume collection A Conflagration Artist and The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians won the World Fantasy Award as the year’s Best Collection. His stories have also been collected in One Day Closer to Death: Eight Stabs at Immortality. He lives in Austin, Texas.

In the wry, fast-paced comic thriller that follows, we learn that it’s not the instrument—it’s the music.