Shaker: A novel

Scott Frank

Jan 2016 · Sold by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

About this ebook

Meet Roy Cooper, stoic, unassuming “errand runner” for various New York criminals. Roy arrives in Los Angeles to shoot a man named Martin Shine a week after a powerful earthquake has knocked out cell service, buckled the freeways, and thrown L.A. into chaos. Roy doesn’t know who Shine is or why he has to die, but he does his job and does it well. Except for one thing: after the hit, Roy can’t find where he parked his car. Wandering the streets of North Hollywood, he stumbles upon a jogger getting mugged and beaten by four young gangbangers. Despite his attempt to simply put his head down and walk away, Roy winds up in the middle of another killing. Things get more complicated when the murdered jogger turns out to be a controversial mayoral candidate. Roy himself is shot twice, hospitalized in critical condition, and mistaken for a hero when a local resident leaks a video that goes viral. 

Now meet the rest of the cast of characters, including Kelly Maguire, a disgraced LAPD detective with an anger management problem and strange feelings about L.A.’s newest hero; Science, the teenage gangbanger/shooter, who needs to keep Roy quiet about what he’s seen; Mayor Miguel Santiago, who finds himself facing accusations that he’s just had his opponent whacked; Albert Budin, Roy’s onetime mentor and one of the scariest, creepiest characters in recent crime fiction; and myriad criminals, politicians, and cops who all need Roy to disappear—preferably forever.

Finally, meet Scott Frank, who has created not just one of the most entertaining novels of the year but also one of the most surprising. This first novel is fun and funny as well as moving and textured, nuanced and powerful. Shaker is the debut work of fiction by a major new storyteller.

Ratings and reviews

1st Book from this author. Look forward to seeing more.

About the author

SCOTT FRANK began his career writing such films as Little Man Tate and Dead Again. His screenplay adaptation for Get Shorty was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and a Writers Guild Award for adapted screenplay. Frank’s adaptation Out of Sight received an Academy Award nomination and won a Writers Guild Award. Frank has also written the screenplays for Heaven’s Prisoners, Minority Report, The Interpreter, Marley & Me, and The Wolverine. He wrote and made his directorial debut in 2007 with The Lookout, which won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature. Most recently, Frank adapted and directed A Walk Among the Tombstones. Shaker is his first novel.