Goon Squad #12

By Jonathan L. Howard

Nadiya Kysla aka PUPPET GIRL approaches the end of her first year with the GOON SQUAD. In that time she has fought organised crime, nearly died at the hands of an angel, faced off against an ancient serial killer, and found real friends, even if one’s a corpse, one’s a werewolf, and one’s a robot. Now, as that year draws to a close, we follow her and her colleagues as she comes to comprehend the scope of her amazing abilities better, but also as she begins to understand the reasons behind tensions within the Squad. There is unfinished business to attend to, and dark times are approaching. Join the GOON SQUAD as there are revelations, dangers and wonders, plus the threat of a mass human sacrifice ruining their evening viewing in THE END OF THE YEAR SHOW.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan L. Howard
• Release date: Aug 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370650910

Jonathan L. Howard

JONATHAN L. HOWARD is a game designer, scriptwriter, and a veteran of the computer-games industry since the early nineties, with titles such as the Broken Sword series to his credit. He is author of Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, Johannes Cabal the Detective, and Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute, as well as the YA novels Katya’s World and Katya’s War. He lives in the United Kingdom with his wife and daughter.

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GOON SQUAD #12

The End of the Year Show

by

Jonathan L. Howard

Copyright

Goon Squad #12 The End of the Year Show

by Jonathan L. Howard

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

Copyright © 2016 Jonathan L. Howard

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http://www.jonathanlhoward.com/

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Cover Illustration by David Ziggy Greene.

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Goon Squad Issue #12

The End of the Year Show

Meanwhile, in Bolton

Ask any Northerner what irks them most about the South (which, to be precise, means the Southeast in this context) and the commonest comment amongst a usually wide-ranging litany will be that the South profits disproportionately in times of boom, while the North suffers disproportionately when the subsequent bust inevitably arrives. There is certainly more than a grain of truth in this; the rigours imposed by the financial disasters of 2008 and their aftermath have been more strongly felt outside the home counties than within them. One need only walk the streets of a Northern town to see rows of empty shops and an air of desperation turning to resignation.

Bolton is a case in point. A town with a long and proud history, its important place in the industrial revolution was not nearly enough to keep it warm when the chill breezes emanating from the miscalculations of Wall Street and the City of London reached it and slowly froze it half to death. Between a customer base with precious little disposable income, a chamber of commerce of dubious worth, and absentee landlords based in the Southeast or even out of the country altogether who knew little of the financial rigours of the area, cared less, and demanded rents that could not be paid, the town felt hollow and wounded. It was all in stark contrast to Manchester, just down the road, but Manchester was resurgent and attracting investment, whereas Bolton was stagnating, or worse.

Which is not to say that the town was without its charms, despite all this: the old Odeon cinema might have been demolished in an act of civic barbarism, and the bland development