Or, like, from where ever…

Praise for This Rancid Mill:

“Hilarious, hardboiled, and full of heart. Decker’s a genius.”
- Cara Hoffman, author of Ruin

“It’s Inherent Vice meets Black Flag. A punk twist to the noir genre. This Rancid Mill is well-written, entertaining, and in your face! It’s sure to be an instant classic!”
-Russ Lippitt, author of F.T.W. Rise of The Anarchy March 

“A neo-noir with a mohawk: This Rancid Mill masterfully combines wit, humor, and suspense into a dark, and sometimes wonderfully ridiculous page-turner. Alex Damage is a riot, whose narrative begs an encore and a sneaky glass of bourbon to taste.” 
- Vanessa C. Hawkins, Award Winning Author of A Child to Cry Over and other stories.

“Philip Marlowe meets his match in Kyle Decker’s punk noir detective Alex Damage. Set in the LA punk scene of the 80s, this dark mystery crackles with gritty scenes and wry dialogue. Damage drinks his booze neat and takes a few for the girl, just like any hard-boiled detective. Chandler would have approved.”
-Catherine O’Connell, author of The Last Night Out

“Alex Damage is, in his own words, ‘a private investigator, of sorts…’ Which is like saying Gnossos Pappadopoulis, the protagonist of Farina’s 1960s classic Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me is a college student. Gnossos unforgettably wended his picaresque way through a crazed 1960s psychedelic landscape. Alex Damage lives in—and wryly observes and obsessively comments on—our own not psychedelic but no less crazy times. What Been Down So Long was to my generation, Kyle Decker’s This Rancid Mill will become to contemporary readers. It’s smart, it’s funny, it’s memorable. It’s not wrong to call this a brilliant novel.”
-Mort Castle, three-time Bram Stoker Award winner, and author of Knowing When to Die: Collected Stories

"The story's great, Alex Damage is hilarious, and the attention to detail is downright astonishing -- everything from Oki Dogs to X-Head's stepdad to Eddie Nash and single-fridge HB garages and beyond. Many non-fiction titles I've read about that era have been far less accurate. Serious punk rock jollies."

-Daniel Weizmann, author of The Last Songbird

“Punk rock PI!!! Like the genre that inspired it, Decker’s This Rancid Mill embodies a punk ethos of DIY, not giving a shit, social critique, and a heavy dose of sardonic humor.”

-Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Magazine

“Punk as a genre of fiction, rather than music or even film, is surprisingly underdeveloped, and Kyle writes a pretty good template for what it should be like.”
-Jon Twitch, bROKe in Korea

“The young punk at the center of This Rancid Mill is an incredibly compelling character, and his talky and fast-paced first-person narration always propels the novel forward, whether he’s flirting with a femme fatale or fighting off a drug dealer’s henchmen.”
-Zachary Kocanda, Heavy Feather Review

“This Rancid Mill brings all the traditional qualities of the craft to its plot with a smash-bang telling.”
-Peter Werbe, The Fifth Estate

“An absolutely smashing read. I loved every second of life through Alex Damage’s eyes. Kyle Decker nailed the voices, attitudes, and ideologies of punks in the early 80’s, and applied it to one hell of a fun noir-laced murder mystery that would make Raymond Chandler proud.”
-Jacob Markoff, author of Zeroed Out

Other Accomplishments

CrimeReads List of Best Historical Fiction of 2023

Chicago Reader Best of 2023 nominee (“Best New Novel by a Chicagoan” and “Best Novelist”)

Praise for Cannon Fodder:

"It quickly defies expectations, while also conforming perfectly to them." - bROKe in Korea

"Right on target." - Amazon review

“Your book smells like adult drink.” -friend’s daughter, age 7