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Seven Stories Press

Works of Radical Imagination

Book cover for Fogtown
Book cover for FogtownBook cover for Fogtown

One foggy day in San Francisco brings together bloody ghosts, a dandyish thug, capricious cops, a suicidal punk rocker, a hyperliterate slumlord, and a sweet old lady sent by God to hand out cash from a hijacked armored car. In Fogtown, Peter Plate uses a loving hand to carve his characters out of hallucination, perversity, and tenacity. Plate's noir sensibility gives him special fluency with the weary souls of urban America's down and out; Fogtown describes a new age unmistakably built on the twentieth century of Nelson Algren and Charles Bukowski.

Book cover for Fogtown
Book cover for FogtownBook cover for Fogtown

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“If Restif had transmuted his peripatetic Parisian musings into suspense fiction, the result might well have resembled Peter Plate's muckraking, gritty take on the fellahin-strewn streets of Fogtown.”

“[Plate's] San Francisco is a fiery hell, where the devil rides in a squad car, and God doesn't deign to put in an appearance.”

Peter Plate

PETER PLATE taught himself to write fiction while squatting in abandoned buildings. He is the author of many books, including the novels Police and ThievesAngels of CatastropheElegy Written on a Crowded StreetSoon the Rest Will Fall, and Dirty in Cashmere, all published by Seven Stories Press. In 2004 Plate was named a Literary Laureate of San Francisco, where he lives.