Death is the Down Beat

About the Book

“Suddenly I saw a pale gray shape dart in front of my car. At first I thought it was just a large dog, thin and long-legged. Trapped between the high wall on the left and the unbroken row of parked cars to the right, the animal ran at a relaxed canter directly down the center of the road a few feet in front of me. I slowed even more. The beast was caught in the headlights and I saw it was no neighborhood pooch out for a midnight stroll. It was a coyote and it was hunting.”

About the Author

Richard Winston was born in 1944 at Minneapolis. He was educated at the Northup School and Folwell Junior High School. California became the family’s home in 1959 and in 1962 he graduated from Glendale High. Later he attended San Jose State University and San Francisco State University, which awarded him a bachelor’s degree in Semiotics in 1976. Between San Jose State and San Francisco State, he went to sea with the U.S. Seventh Fleet during the Vietnam conflict, serving as a deck-seaman and quartermaster for about 26 months. The story idea for death is the downbeat, originally conceived as a screenplay for a student film, continued to grow in scale and complexity until only the form of the novel could contain it.