I live a quiet life. Wife, family, gym membership—the whole catastrophe.

But Joshua Mohr’s latest, Saint the Terrifying (290 pages; The Unnamed Press) offers me—and you, Dear Reader—a day-pass to a world of pain, glory, lust, and limitlessness. It’s a picaresque account of a West Oakland punk rocker on a mission from God (make that Scandinavian deities) to find out who’s been stealing the gear from his starving musician buddies and make them pay for their sins, bigly.

At story’s outset, the one-eyed title character is recovering from the death of his alcoholic mother, who had a habit of dancing on top of bars when the mood struck while her son played video games in the corner.  He makes his way to Norway to meet Trondun, the father he never knew, an Iggy Pop-lookalike who shuns fame but has nevertheless been gifted with a Telecaster from Keith Richards as payment in kind for his treasured glass-blown birds.

After being trained by Tron in the dark arts of survival (wrestling bears and killing rats with a bow and arrow), he returns to the States, only to do a stretch in San Quentin before venturing, Philip Marlowe-style, into detective work on the underbelly of the local music scene.

He’s nicknamed “Saint’’ by Hild, an army supply store employee whom he rescues after she accidentally pepper sprays herself (a relatively normal day in this narrative), who rewards him with a unique eye patch (“Most were your standard pirate fare, but one said PORN STAR across it’’) and a machete.

Saint’s nemesis, pseudonymed Wes Than Zero, in sardonic homage to Bret Easton Ellis, is the mastermind of the theft (and dope) ring, which our hero vows to exact revenge upon when gear is stolen from Trick Wilma, a front woman he is crushing on, just as the band is getting recognition that will culminate in their debut gig at 924 Gilman. (There’s a running joke about Green Day, who embody the success story of this particular scene. It’s worth adding – possibly – that the Bay Area punk crowd seems more joyous than their quickly commodified peers at CBGB’s. Oh, yes, there’s an accompanying vinyl five-song EP of Slummy, Saint’s fictional band, available, too.)

A depiction of Saint’s adopted home, the Oakland Ghost Ship that burnt to the ground in 2016, pays homage to the romantic dreams it embodied before turning into horror and ashes, setting the scene: “we lived here, oh yes, we loved it here, oh yes, our zoo, our mental hospital, our bus station, and I awoke every day ecstatic to live in this vulgar empire.’’

The dialogue and plot play with noir conventions, and Pynchon-esque exchanges that fall just this side of mannerism, but are saved by the author’s comic sense of proportion.

The first of a three-part Viking Punk trilogy, written in the depths of Covid isolation, Saint the Terrifying is deceptively ambitious, in some ways reminiscent of early William T. Vollmann. It’s also a blast. Even Wes Than Zero has a charming side, as he sticks with free-form speed raps even as he gets his comeuppance.

And the novel has the feel of an author rediscovering exhilaration after coping with the twin disasters of addiction and a third stroke, as recounted in Mohr’s terrifying (and ultimately uplifting) 2021 memoir, Model Citizen.

We end up wishing Saint, Trick Wilma, and the boyz in the band the best as they head out on an overseas road tour, even as he surprises us by making an uneasy peace with the specter of gentrification. Debts settled, he considers joining the tolling masses with a day job at Whole Foods upon his return. Vulgarity, surprisingly, has its own kind of beauty.

ZYZZYVA Contributing Editor Paul Wilner is a longtime member of the National Book Critics Circle. A book columnist for the Nob Hill Gazette, his reviews have appeared in Alta, among many other publications.