Like Swimmers - by Dash Shaw (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A murder mystery set in pandemic-era Virginia, where a young web designer attempts to uncover who shot and killed her brother--and why the murderer decided to use a silver bullet, from the author of Blurry and Discipline.

Like Swimmers opens during the Covid summer of 2020, when Richmond-based web designer Mackenzie wakes up to find her younger brother Howie dead in their apartment. An autopsy reveals a startling cause: Howie was killed by a silver bullet.

With no help from a police force overwhelmed by protest and plague, Mackenzie turns sleuth and goes on the hunt for an answer to what she believes is a simple question: who murdered Howie?

But what seems straightforward to her isn't to anyone else. Howie's deadbeat friends aren't even sure Howie was murdered: what if he just killed himself? Undeterred, Mackenzie suspects the cryptic Isa, who Howie was running errands for before his death. Was she Howie's lover? Or just the focus of Howie's unrelenting obsession? Mackenzie will follow all the threads--from Howie's time as a courier during the worst of Covid to the sleazy machinations of Isa's professor husband--all the way to a startling and brutal conclusion.

Dash Shaw, fresh off the acclaimed Blurry, delivers a fast-paced mystery in lush painted color that delves into loss, calamity, and whether we ever really know the people we love.

Review Quotes

"Shaw is as eager to entertain as he is to mess with the parameters of his medium."
--Douglas Wolk, The New York Times

"Dash Shaw has established himself as one of this generation's most distinguished cartoonists."
--Oliver Sava, The A.V. Club

"Shaw . . . reinvents himself with each graphic novel." --Ed Park, The Week

"Shifting between multiple viewpoints and possible versions of the truth, Shaw's twisty, perturbing narrative is matched by his haunting images, which writhe and ooze on the page, their inviting soft pastel colours a cunning source of further disquiet." --Lucy Scholes, Financial Times

"Shaw imbues the pandemic's inertia with the smoky musk of detective fiction . . . In this Rashomon-like whodunit, the truth grows hazier as the clues accumulate. Art comics fans will find that Shaw's kaleidoscopic story lingers long after its delirious close." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Mirroring the confusion of the pandemic with supernatural elements, this graphic mystery is an effective meditation on grief." --Kirkus Reviews

"Shaw's exploration of inexplicable loss leads readers into a liminal world between reality and fantasy. He draws in fine lines, colors mostly in pastels, with the deepest hues bursting when intensity won't be contained. He deftly plumbs what his characters can't know about what they most long to understand." --Booklist

About the Author

Dash Shaw is a cartoonist and animator. His most recent graphic novel, Blurry, from New York Review Comics, was named a graphic novel of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, and others. He's also the cartoonist of Discipline, New School, Bottomless Belly Button, BodyWorld, and others. He's written and directed two animated features, most recently the 2021 film Cryptozoo, which won the Sundance Next Innovator Award.