The CEO of a giant Pharmaceutical Corporation has discovered that thousands of dollars worth of dangerous narcotics have gone missing from the company’s warehouse, and nobody has even noticed. It’s an inside job; a smuggling racket that’s been in gear for years, brazenly sneaking the drugs right out through the front door. An undercover Rat is hired to pose as a worker and get to the bottom of the racket. And this he does; very quickly, he identifies the smugglers, cozies up to them, and is all set to report in and and have them busted. But his developing love for the young female member of the ring of thieves has complicated his job.
Tawdry and mesmerizing, Eli the Rat is as much a commentary on greed and urgent compromise as it is a caper doomed before it begins. The characters and their circumstances may seem all too familiar and yet still pack the power to surprise even after the dust settles. Reading this book a lot like starting a new job, and finding out the truth about the American workplace after obligations and responsibilities make quitting in protest impossible.
—Jane Rosenberg LaForge, author of An Unsuitable Princess: A True Fantasy/A Fantastical Memoir(Jaded Ibis Press 2014)
Eli the Rat is a noirish, kaleidoscopic novel checkered with the allure of money, power, addiction, envy, and longing. Meirose's multi-perspectival storytelling evokes the turbulent lives of workers behind the scenes, churning with misfortune and misguided loyalties.
—James Esch, Editor, Turk’s Head Review
Using clean, minimalist prose, Meirose constructs the complex dreams—and schemes—of workers stuck on the 9-to-5 wheel. This is poignant yet subtle literary fiction, offering both humor and tragedy as its characters strive for better lives outside the workplace walls. When Meirose holds up a mirror before the workaday world, we see grit in the reflection—as well as truth.
—David Massengill, Author, Red Swarm
With wild imagery and his masterful use of internal monologue, Meirose thrusts us in the mind-bending drug-induced madness of his characters. His words, like that which is present in so many of Eli’s visions, are fire.
—Corey Mingura, Editor, Arcadia
Meirose is a master of interiority, with shifting points of view and meandering states of mind, the unlanguage of thought is the glue that holds his art together—and art it is. Meirose explores the thin spaces between thoughts and words, desires and deeds, motivation is his playground, duplicity his swing set, altered states the quicksand bars of his jungle gym.
—Ruuf Wangerson, Author, The Pleasure Model Repairman
Following in the footsteps of noir, Eli the Rat is a true tale of intrigue; about greed and vice, but also of desperation, desire, and affection. What pushes people to the lengths they go to, to survive? Meirose ponders the question, and still leaves us wanting more.
—Nana K. Twumasi, Co-editor, Monday Night, A Journal of New Literature
Jim Meirose is the author of the previously published novel “Mount Everest”, and of three upcoming novels, which will also be released by Montag Press. Nearly three hundred of his short stories have appeared in various literary magazines and journals over the past twenty years, such as The Fiddlehead, Witness, Alaska Quarterly review, Xavier Review, New Orleans review, South Carolina Review, Whiskey Island Magazine, Ohio Edit, Bartleby Snopes, and many others. His short work has been nominated for several awards including The Shirley Jackson Award and the O. Henry Award (for which his story "Fair Morning" was short-list- ed). Jim lives in Somerville, NJ, with his wife, Mary Beth. Together they have one married daughter, Noelle Heber, and three beautiful grandchildren.
