Enter the Peerless

Elpenor, a newly minted private investigator, finds his first case on Craigslist: twenty-nine people have entered an abandoned trailer in rural Indiana, and none of them have left. Unable to open the trailer’s doors or windows, Elpenor enlists two local accomplices, a knife grinder (Don the Knife) and a janitor (Hugh Gardener). When they finally gain access, they fall into a pocket universe ruled by a godlike being called Fiascoal.

Refugees of this world—a depopulated and exact copy of our world—congregate around a web of communities in St. Louis. Elpenor attempts to find the missing people but is instead forced to become the new host of Fiascoal as a communal ritual. His search for the missing in the netherworld and the needs of the hungry, petulant god conflict as Don the Knife raises a cult of personality, community leaders abuse their authority, and Elpenor must decide whether to save the few over the many. That is, if he can find a way out of the metaphysical prison he’s broken into. Told in a charged high-rhetorical, hard-boiled style, Enter the Peerless is a detective novel for the paranoiacs and heartsick rejects who know an angel in the dirt when they see one. 

Kyle Winkler

Kyle Winkler is Associate Prof. of English at Kent State University Tuscarawas and is on the MFA Faculty at Ashland University. He lives in Ohio with his family. He’s the author of the cosmic horror novella The Nothing That Is, the weird story collection OH PAIN, and the novel Boris Says the Words. His next two novels are Tone-Bone (Sept. 13, 2024, Castaigne Publishing) and Enter the Peerless (June 10, 2025, From Beyond Press). He’s everywhere online as @bleakhousing.