Not Long Ago Persons Found - by J Richard Osborn (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A forensics team investigates the murder of a child and is drawn into a chilling international coverup

The body of a young boy is found floating in a city river with pollen in his lungs from a warm river valley far from the country where he died. Who is he? Why was he carrying only a library card and decorative clay bottle? How is it that he came so far, only to meet with a violent fate?

A biological anthropologist and her husband, the forensic team's translator, are tasked by their agency to gather evidence from the far away country and deliver an explanation--preferably one that suits the political regimes of both countries. But as the scientists' clandestine, parallel study of recent mass graves brings them closer to finding a link between the boy and "the disappeared," the full forces of bureaucracy, fatalism, and forgetting are marshalled against them.

Review Quotes

Southern California News Group "Books You'll Want to Read" selection
Foreword Reviews "Book of the Day" selection

"Unique and intriguing. . . . In Not Long Ago Persons Found, demonstrable evidence of facts does not serve as the bedrock of what is presented by authorities as the truth. . . . These lessons, and this novel, are both important and timely." --PopMatters

"Refreshing. . . . If one reads the novel as an allegory, it changes the reader's perspective." --North of Oxford

"Harrowing, tautly plotted. . . . A tense, claustrophobic detective tale about the toll exacted on people trying to uncover the truth." --Kirkus Reviews

"Feverish. . . . Long bonds fracture as national façades crumble and entrenched cruelties are revealed in the startling dystopian novel Not Long Ago Persons Found." --Foreword Reviews

"Haunting, gorgeous, mysterious, propulsive--a novel as brilliant about currents of violence as it is about the flow of tree pollen through the air and rivers. As I heard echoes of Coetzee and Didion and a music that is all Osborn's own, I wanted to turn the pages even faster, to learn what would happen next and, at the same time, to slow down and linger on the masterful prose. A stunning accomplishment." --Heather Abel, author of The Optimistic Decade

"An astonishing achievement, Osborn's first novel explores imaginary territories that echo of places, countries, and conflicts we recognize, in the manner of Jim Crace and Italo Calvino, but does so with forensic precision." --Susan Daitch, author of The Lost Civilizations of Suolucidir and The Adjudicator

"J. Richard Osborn's fever dream of a novel brings us into a shadowy world that feels eerily familiar. Riveting and deeply unsettling, Not Long Ago Persons Found dramatizes just how Byzantine the quest for justice has become in our time." --Askold Melnyczuk, author of The House of Widows and The Man Who Would Not Bow

"J. Richard Osborn's near-future world is a menacing mix of science, superstition, and governmental treachery as an edgy couple goes deep undercover to investigate a boy's horrific murder. Not Long Ago Persons Found is exceptionally fast-moving and suspenseful." --Sharyn Skeeter, author of Dancing with Langston

"Part ghost story, part scientific disquisition, and part political intrigue, Not Long Ago Persons Found is a gripping, Borgesian allegory of our futile attempts to see between things--between peoples, places, and 'through gaps in the trees'--in order to find truth and meaning in a world that resists determinacy." --Peter Matthiessen Wheelwright, author of As It Is On Earth and The Door-Man

About the Author

J. Richard Osborn is a poet and fiction writer living in Oakland, California. A video performance of his long poem, "Crève Coeur," has been screened at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, as well as other venues. His fiction has appeared in the New England Review and Yale Literary Magazine. Not Long Ago Persons Found is his first novel.