Twentynine Palms, the cult noir novel by acclaimed screenwriter and author Daniel Pyne. Newly published by Starlite Pulp, this gritty desert thriller returns to the spotlight with a fresh edition worthy of its sharp prose and stark setting.

For Jack Baylor, a struggling actor who needs a quick exit from the City of Angels after an affair with his best friend’s wife, Twentynine Palms is the perfect refuge. Jack’s plan to lay low, relax, and enjoy the high desert quickly goes sideways, however, as his best friend, Tory, is already following his trail up Highway 62 with bad intentions. When a family disappears from the motel Jack is staying in, he is the only logical suspect. Now he has to clear his name and escape a revenge plot. With the unexpected help of a fourteen-year-old girl, Jack must evade the police and Tory before his world comes entirely unhinged. With the merciless Southern California desert heat as backdrop, Twentynine Palms is a sun-faded, brutal race toward a surprising truth.

“I just adore this book. Twentynine Palms is a slow-motion dust devil, hypnotic and magnificent and unstoppable. An intersection of desert heat and nihilistic Hollywood absurdity, it’s a noir classic with cigarettes and motel rooms and blood, but also, genuinely, and tenderly, a love story.”- Jardine Libaire, author of White Fur and You’re an Animal

“Twentynine Palms is classic California noir.”- Kem Nunn, author of Tapping the Source and Tijuana Straits

Cover art by Ryan Snowden. 

300 pages.