Reel 01Debut Novel

THEGRIFFITH

Whistle While You Die

A lawman’s badge. A house that remembers. A town that forgets — until the whistling starts.

A Novel By A·J·Vale·Gothic Thriller·First Edition Forthcoming

Fig. 01 / Cover ArtA·J·Vale © MMXXVI

Reel 02The Griffith

The nicest sheriff
in Kentucky.

“I only snap,” Andy said, meeting Miller’s eyes with an expression of perfect pleasantness, “when the tension’s too high, Deputy.”

In Maryville, Kentucky, Sheriff Andy Pruitt is the man everyone counts on. Uniform pressed to a razor edge. Hat level. A warm, fatherly smile he has been perfecting for forty years. He brings coffee for the dispatcher, sings folk songs on Tuesday nights at Barney’s, and carries the weight of a town that has never had to wonder who to call.

He also carries three coiled high-E guitar strings in his right pocket. And a mother, upstairs in the Victorian on the edge of town, who raised him on reruns of The Andy Griffith Show and the idea that a real man whistles while he works.

When a rude newcomer is found strangled on her back porch and a trucker turns up dead at the Route 9 rest stop, a sharp-eyed state detective named Vance arrives in Maryville with a theory nobody wants to hear: the killer is local, he knows the victims, and he wears a badge.

The Griffith is a literary American thriller about nostalgia as a weapon, the masks small towns let their protectors wear, and the patient, whistled melody of a man who has been waiting his whole life to finally become the Sheriff his mother wanted.

Reel 03Excerpt

Chapter One.
Three Notes.

Exhibit B · Excerpt Released

Confidential / Draft

An excerpt from the opening pages of The Griffith, first-edition draft. Reader discretion advised.

Exhibit BThe Griffith / Ch. 1 · The Mask

— A.J. Vale

The alarm clock would go off at 6:00 AM. It always did. But Sheriff Andy Pruitt was already awake — had been awake since 5:17, when his eyes snapped open in the dark like a trap closing. No dream to wake from. Just the sudden, electric awareness that another day had arrived and he was still in it. He lay still, fingers gripping the edge of the mattress hard enough that his knuckles had turned white. The sheets beneath him were damp with sweat despite the cool Kentucky air seeping through the closed window. His heart was moving at a speed that didn't match the stillness of his body.

Fig. 02 / PortraitStudy, A.J. Vale

Reel 04The Author

A·J·Vale

A.J. Vale writes American literary thrillers about the men small towns agree not to look at too closely. His fiction lives in the space between a warm smile and the thing it is covering for — the places where nostalgia curdles, where mothers are weather systems, and where the most dangerous person in the room is usually the one holding the door open for you.

The Griffith is his debut novel and the first volume of a planned trilogy. Book two, The Griffith II: The Quiet Season, is in progress.

— A.J.

Writing from the pines · MMXXVI

Reel 05The Collection

What’s next in
the collection.

The Griffith is the first. It is not the last.

Vol. IForthcoming

The Griffith

Whistle While You Die

Sheriff Andy Pruitt has three guitar strings in his pocket and a smile for every neighbor in Maryville, Kentucky.

Vol. IIAnnounced

The Quiet Season

The Griffith, Book Two

The Maryville house is ash. The man who lit the match has a new town, a new badge, and all the time in the world.

Vol. IIIOutlined

Untitled

The Griffith, Book Three

The final volume of the trilogy. Details to be released when the time is right.

Reel 06Signal

Keep an ear
to the line.

Release dates, first-chapter drops, and the occasional dispatch from the pines. No noise. No spoilers. No small talk.

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