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Novelist Peter Kelton, a retired U.S. Newsman, has published six novels in the cross-genre category of literary fiction. His novels conform to the belief that well-written literary fiction doesn’t have to be “Highbrow”; it has to embrace ideas about destiny in a storyline that holds the readers’ attention. He wrote for Texas newspapers in Temple, Greenville and San Antonio and for trade magazines in New York. In 1962 he left the New York editing scene to try to write novels, living in a village in Spain. He returned in 1965 with two manuscripts that Perry Knowlton, an agent at Curtis Brown, promptly accepted. The agent’s only question when they met: “What are you going to write next?” Kelton continued to write novels at night and on weekends for more than 50 years, while writing news daily. Along with more than 100 free-lance assignments, he wrote 450 reviews of novels for six years as National Contemporary Literature critic for Examiner (dot) com. He later placed some of those reviews on Goodreads. He turned 86 in 2018, experiencing a belated wake-up call, for he owned four unsold, unrepresented novels lying fallow, the product of more than 50 years. Kelton has said his story is pretty much the journey that many writers take through the fog of creation to find clarity. “It takes some of us a lot longer to learn than most. But now I’ve got six novels published and well worth reading . . . finally.”
Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite
The Trevor Truculence by Peter Kelton is a standalone work of literary fiction set in a tiny village in Spain, perched within reach of the Mediterranean. The village is as much a character in the book as all those who live in it, creating enough nooks, crannies, and mysterious doorways for clandestine meetings among the cobblestone. It is behind these doors and into these lives that Kelton takes us, in a story that begins with Paul and his wife Evelyn, but ultimately weaves in and out of multiple plots and characters, joining together Paul, the divinely portrayed Gerda, and a conspiracist-adventurer named Trevor who is determined to finally unlock a centuries-old legend.
Peter Kelton writes with a strong and witty voice in The Trevor Truculence, leading with dark humor and an intelligent, engaging narrative from Paul's introduction. The scenery is extraordinary and the people—oh my goodness...the people!—are so fully fleshed that even ancillary characters come to life. This is fiction that, told in the first person, leans heavily on the sarcasm of our narrator. This worried me initially because I thought it might compromise my ability to endear myself to other characters, but Kelton writes with the skilled hand of an experienced storyteller and (to my surprise and delight) Paul's acerbic outlook actually achieved the opposite. I'd recommend this book to lovers of offbeat literary fiction and anyone comfortable with a story line that brazenly cavorts outside of convention, all the while being bound and confined within a beautiful Spanish fishing village.
