ABOUT THE BOOK

Out of the blue Jack Fletcher, a former hot-shot surf photographer now surviving on hack work, cheap beer and muscle relaxants, gets a call from the surfing magazine he worked for back in his glory days. Assigned to photograph Drew Harmon surfing the remote reef known as 'Heart Attacks', the photographer can't quite believe his luck: both the surfer and the wave are the stuff of legend, and mean a ticket back into the big time.

With two young surf punks in tow, Fletcher heads off for the grim wilderness of Northern California, and the Indian territory where Harmon now lives with his half-mad wife Kendra, who roams the woods at night wearing the clothes of a murdered girl. This is not what Jack had expected, and things get worse.

To reach the fabled Heart Attacks and ride the winter waves Harmon, Fletcher and the punks must cross the tract of blasted headland known to the local Hupa, Yurok and Tolowan Indians as 'The Devil's Hoof'. When a child dies in an accident, the white men are blamed; the Indians, swearing vengeance, kidnap and brutalise Kendra, then set off to kill the surfers.

In this desolate wasteland the search for the perfect wave becomes a quest for survival, as events lead inevitably to their final, tragic climax.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

"This is the greatest novel ever written about surfing. The second best is Nunn's Tapping the Source. The third best is whatever Nunn writes next." - Newsweek

"The Dogs of Winter closes in on the territories of violence, retribution and sheer terror mapped out by Deliverance and Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs. Unease, anxiety and dread seep through these pages. This is a stunning, extraordinary book, full of turbulent moods and atmosphere and set in a landscape of ruin and decay where a man may find out too much about himself and the fear inside him. A masterpiece." - Uncut

"A profound study of skill, courage and the human psyche." - Robert Stone

Tapping the Source

"Kem Nunn is one of a rare breed, a novelist who knows how to plot and tell a story. There is amazing energy here" - Elmore Leonard

"Forceful and gripping..in the same league as the best of Chandler and James Crumley. The all-time great surfing novel" - Robert Stone

"Tense and driven with a sense of the apocalypse around the corner." - Washington Post

"What Hemingway's Nick Adams did for fishing, Kem Nunn does for surfing. Through the sensibility of its hero and the sensitivity of its author, Tapping the Source puts you there and makes you understand." - Saturday Review

"Hammett, Chandler, James Cain and Ross MacDonald, Kem Nunn has surpassed them all" - L.A.Times

ESSENTIAL TRIVIA

Surf rage seems to be adding a new and ugly dimension to the sport, as detailed in a recent CNN news article: Surf Rage