Never Count Out the Dead (2001) by Boston Teran is a gritty, high-octane thriller that plunges readers into the neon-soaked underworld of 1980s Los Angeles, where crime and redemption collide with brutal force. The story follows Johnny “The Baptist” Gavilan, a former boxer turned enforcer, whose life spirals into chaos after a botched robbery leaves a trail of bodies—including a cop—and a bag of stolen cash vanishing into the desert.
As Gavilan navigates a labyrinth of betrayal, pursued by a relentless detective and haunted by his own violent past, the novel unfolds like a fever dream of noir fatalism. Teran’s prose is razor-wire taut, drenched in atmospheric detail—from the stench of sweat-soaked gyms to the glare of Sunset Strip dive bars—while the plot twists with the precision of a switchblade.
A meditation on guilt, survival, and the ghosts of choices made, Never Count Out the Dead is pulp fiction elevated to art, its characters etched in blood and shadows. For fans of James Ellroy or Denis Johnson, it’s a knockout punch of existential crime fiction.
