Dirty in Cashmere

"Set in post-apocalyptic San Francisco, with nuclear contamination from Japan looming at California's shores, this slim noir tale takes us into the mind of a nineteen-year-old self-described oracle whose own future is the only one he can't predict. Dirty in Cashmere follows Ricky through a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, a city dealing with the fall-out from a nuclear disaster in Japan, after which massive contamination spread across the Pacific Ocean to California. He's set adrift in a world in which Life--the street name of an experimental radiation vaccine--is the currency by which both criminal enterprises and survival are won. As he squats in abandoned houses and brands himself as an "oracle" who can see the future--first for nefarious purposes, then for more noble ones--Ricky wonders whether there isn't a bigger picture out there, one that maybe he can't focus on or perhaps one that someone's hiding from him. And as his skills as an oracle are called upon by more powerful forces, it becomes clear that the one thing Ricky wants most to predict--his own future--is the only thing impervious to his newfound insights. Ricky Bellamy is shot in the head by a vigilante at the corner of Geneva and Mission in San Francisco. He's declared brain-dead and hooked up to life support, but ten months later he emerges from his coma. The bullet stays lodged in his head--inoperable, the doctors say--but with it comes what Ricky calls "visions, a third eye." "--

PETER PLATE taught himself to write fiction while squatting in abandoned buildings. He is the author of many books, including his eight neo-noir “psychic histories” of San Francisco.