Saint the Terrifying

Joshua Mohr

In the first installment of Joshua Mohr’s Viking Punk saga, a West Oakland musician acquires a new name and new calling. Chasing down a gang of thieves, Saint the Terrifying turns a gritty urban detective story into the stuff of legend.

Saint’s an ex-con still coming to terms with his origin story. 

Raised in the wilds of Norway by an artisan father famed for his glass-blown birds, Saint trained daily in ancient Norse martial arts with a bear as his sparring partner. One day, his father makes a critical mistake, forcing Saint to leave his home forever, and move to San Francisco. 

Years later and fresh out of prison, Saint finds himself immersed in the Oakland punk music scene. On stage, he’s struggling to find his identity as a guitar player in a mediocre band. Off stage, his uniquely Norse skillset suddenly turns Saint into a one-eyed punk gumshoe after sinister thieves start targeting local bands' gear. But it is only when Saint meets Trick Wilma, the powerhouse lead singer of another (better) band, that he begins to see the glimmer of salvation in her eyes. 

Propelled by a broken Baroque of punk language, Saint the Terrifying examines tensions between community and individual identity, social activism and vigilantism, while taking the reader on a roller coaster ride of hard-boiled twists and hardcore music. Saint is the badass protagonist that answers the question: What if Johnny Rotten had a baby with The Rock?

Praise for Saint the Terrifying

"“Mohr is a charismatic narrator… I hope he keeps writing for as long as he can.”"
—Jeremy Gordon, The New York Times Book Review

"Mohr writes with energy and a sense of music. Beneath the tragedy and neon mayhem runs a lovely optimism, a feeling of redemption and generosity toward mankind."
—Steph Cha, author of Your House Will Pay

"Josh Mohr is a kind of punk rock arc-angel, and this wildly sacred book is on fire with his genius. It’s everything. The whole horizon, within and without."
—Luis Alberto Urrea,

"Delivering a pitch perfect voice, this is the book Henry Rollins would have written if he had been a fiction-writing-Viking, moshing to the Cro-Mags or The Misfits and viewing Sonny Chiba flicks, but he did not, instead you have the creatively powerful voice of Joshua Mohr at the height of his literary powers."
—Frank Bill, author of Crimes in Southern Indiana, Donnybrook, The Savage, and Back to the Dirt