From the acclaimed author of A SHORT HISTORY OF A SMALL PLACE and SEAWORTHY comes a wholesale departure — a comic/horror/romance/fantasy infested with both unsavory American politicians and venomous Venetian lizards. Awash in Pearson's singular wit, Red Scare tells the headlong story of a public school biology teacher and a National Gallery curator who join forces to thwart the dire consequences of a medieval Italian curse. This novel, though slender, is packed to overflowing with priapic senators, clueless teenagers, dubious art history, clumsy quasi-romantic repartee, garish worldwide bloodletting, corrosive humor, and enough malicious scuttling reptiles to keep you from ever planting your bare feet on a darkened floor again.

The world T.R. Pearson is constructing just gets larger and larger.  The pleasures of entering it are irresistible 

—The Washington Post