The Suicide Collectors: A Novel

by David Oppegaard

Overview

The Despair has plagued the earth for five years. Most of the world's population has inexplicably died by its own hand, and the few survivors struggle to remain alive. A mysterious, shadowy group called the Collectors has emerged, inevitably appearing to remove the bodies of the dead. But in the crumbling state of Florida, a man named Norman takes an unprecedented stand against the Collectors, propelling him on a journey across North America. It's rumored a scientist in Seattle is working on a cure for the Despair, but in a world ruled by death, it won't be easy to get there.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312586508
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/24/2009
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

David Oppegaard was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. He holds a B.A. in English Literature from St. Olaf College and an M.F.A. in Writing from Hamline University. The Suicide Collectors is his first novel.

Editorial Reviews

Just when it seems that there are no new plots left to write about, David Oppegaard has come up with a doozy. His "The Suicide Collectors" takes us to a startling theme we haven't encountered before, with every page a thrilling new surprise.” —Stan Lee, writer, editor, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics

“David Oppegaard's THE SUICIDE COLLECTORS is a wonderfully creepy debut novel filled with unnerving twists and turns! Unsettling, bleak and dangerous.” —Jonathan Maberry, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of PATIENT ZERO

“Oppegaard's big bad is an abstraction, but it engenders very concrete terrors. I was reminded of Junji Ito's Uzumaki, which in my book is as good as it gets.
” —Mike Carey, author of THE DEVIL YOU KNOW, and bestselling and award-winning author of Vertigo Comics's LUCIFER and HELLBLAZER

“Eloquent prose and haunting characters lift Oppegaard's astonishing debut...” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

From the Publisher

While The Suicide Collectors has the flippant dialogue and nonstop thrills of an action movie, Oppegaard addresses the emotional costs of suicide seriously. "Once someone you loved killed himself," he writes, "a new, dark trail of thought had been cut for you to follow…Suicide survivors could, if they weren't careful, swiftly find themselves at the end of that freshly blazed trail, standing with one foot in life and one in death." Suicide is catching. As always with the best science fiction, The Suicide Collectors takes a real-world phenomenon to its logical conclusion.
—The Washington Post

Rachel Hartigan Shea

Eloquent prose and haunting characters lift Oppegaard's astonishing debut, an SF thriller with some eerie similarities to M. Night Shyamalan's film about mass suicide, The Happening. In the near future, 90% of the world's population have killed themselves due to a plague called "the Despair." The only people energized by the nightmare are the Collectors, who after each suicide appear like carrion birds to collect the corpse. Only one man resists the Collectors. When the wife of a 34-year-old Floridian named Norman takes a fatal overdose of sleeping pills, Norman loads his shotgun and waits patiently before blowing the head off a Collector who arrives to claim the body. Norman and his neighbor, Franklin "Pops" Conway, head for Seattle after learning a doctor there may have found a cure for the Despair. In Kansas, they're joined by Zero, an 11-year-old girl whose bravery encourages Norman in his quest. While the story may be too bleak for many readers, the ending holds out some hope. (Dec.)

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