Peter Manus

Represented by John Silbersack

Peter Manus was drawn to noir while growing up in New York City. It was a time of midnight movies in the Village and freebie tables at the secondhand bookstore, and as a kid Manus assumed that the best books were printed on stinky paper and the best films came with that crackly noise. His thing for B flicks, classic slashers, schlock sci fi, Euro-downers, and anything eerie has only grown through the decades. People who find this fixation odd may have a point.

Manus’s first novel, FICKLE (Diversion Books, 2016) is a murder mystery presented in the form of a flighty noir-lover’s late night blog entries. Reviewers appreciated its daring, complex plot and its echoes of noir greats like Double Indemnity and The Asphalt Jungle. Manus’s second novel, THE DORCHESTER FIVE (Diversion Books, 2017) is a cat and mouse cop-killer thriller with a semi-psychic lesbian homicide cop called Pop as its protagonist. Pop’s a grounded, decent and likeable no-nonsense Boston cop, and she features in Manus’s current novel-in-progress, another gritty noir with gothic horror tones set in Boston.

Manus works as a professor in Boston. He enjoys strident students, chubby dogs, windy islands, and, mostly, his one-of-a-kind wife. Lucky for him, his wife and son are both super-cool.