Coming November 10, 2026

Middleman

A soul-seeking family man pursues the American Dream through a series of comic nightmares involving Zoom calls, rental houses, and a con man's plot to rob the dead.

Jake Flynn is an underpaid and overstressed remote worker feeling pulled apart by the demands of modern life and middle age. His parents need care. His young children need attention. And his burnt-out wife needs support. With his boss hounding him at all hours and the debts rolling in, Jake worries that he’ll never be able to give his family the home and stability they deserve.
When they move into a new rental house, the neighbors only make things worse. There’s Edwina, the town historian with an increasingly strange newsletter hinting at a dark past. There’s her son, Eddie, a freewheeling aspiring artist hungry for easy money, erotic encounters, and revenge. And then there’s Trevor, a lonely 15-year-old whose desire to take care of his mother and little brother lands him in the wrong place at the wrong time.
At the center of their odd small town, there’s the old cemetery with three mausoleums containing beautiful treasures and hideous secrets. Unable to resist temptation, Eddie concocts a scheme to rob them of something valuable, and he manipulates Trevor and Jake to help pull it off.
Middleman presents a humorous, heartfelt, and unsettling account of an amateur heist gone wrong, the damning consequences of playing someone else’s game, and the human desire for both freedom and security in a world of uncertainty.

Pre-order now

Cover of the novel 'Middleman' by Brendan Flaherty, featuring silhouettes of five people in a graveyard with gravestones and a church in the background, in shades of blue and black.

“The human comedy takes a wicked turn in Flaherty’s masterfully orchestrated novel.”

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A middle-aged everyman struggling with family life and mounting debts gets drawn into a wild grave-robbing scheme when he moves to a small town with shadowy secrets. Flaherty is a writer on the rise, and his charms are on full display in this new novel, with a story full of big characters with subtly powerful arcs.”

—Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads

“A darkly comic, compulsively readable story of a down-on-his-luck family man who gets dragged into a boneheaded criminal scheme involving mausoleums and Tiffany windows and ugly sculptures. Brendan Flaherty is a sharp observer of the human comedy, and his wise and wryly funny voice never falters.”

—Tom Perrotta, bestselling author of The Leftovers

“This is an intoxicating gem of a novel; filled with hope and grief that is hilarious and heartbreaking, Middleman is impossible to put down unless you’re doing so to savor the prose.”

—Henry Wise, Edgar Award-winning author of Holy City

“Tense, dark, and very funny, Middleman is a small-town crime story driven by one questionable decision after another. A propulsive, nail-biting read.”

—Tom Ryan, bestselling author of Return to Breakneck Island

“Middleman is not your father’s crime novel. This is something new, something fresh and bold, and somehow, still tender. There’s real heart here.”

—Eli Cranor, bestselling author of Mississippi Blue 42

“A darkly funny, wonderfully offbeat crime story about family, money, responsibility and just how easily a decent person can find himself standing somewhere he never intended to be.”

—Teresa Brock, Best Thriller Books

About The Dredge

Two estranged brothers must confront the violence of the past when they find out a pond where they played as children will be dredged, threatening to reveal a long-hidden secret.

After some traumatic teenaged years in rural Connecticut, Cale and Ambrose Casey had nothing left to say to each other. Cale ran off to Hawaii to sell luxury real estate. Ambrose stayed behind and built up his construction company. Neither thought they’d be in touch again and were glad for it—until they learned of a real estate developer’s plan to drain and expand Gibbs Pond.
Nearly 30 years before, the Casey brothers buried a secret in that pond, which fell somewhere between self-defense and family preservation.
Lily Rowe, the contractor in charge of the dredging, can also trace her roots—and her trauma—to the banks of Gibbs Pond. After a childhood that saw her and her brother yanked across the country by her abusive father, it was here where she finally stayed put, even if they didn’t. But as ambitious as Lily is, and as much as she wants answers of her own, her family also has secrets to protect.
Now, the haunted lives of Cale, Ambrose, and Lily collide once more as they reunite to unearth the devastation of the past.

Get it at your getting place

“Flaherty writes with stealthy acuity, his prose seemingly simple yet full of coiled power… Multiple hauntings emerge in The Dredge, and you’ll be contemplating them after the last page.”
—Sarah Weinman, the New York Times
“Flaherty deftly conjures up an atmosphere of dread and suspense, with all roads leading to the pond, and all concerns pointing toward what lies at its bottom. This is an assured, compulsively readable debut.”
—Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads
“In this accomplished debut mystery, Flaherty revitalizes the familiar trope of old secrets threatening to resurface with sinewy prose and well-tooled suspense. . . The past and present unfold gradually from the vantage points of Flaherty’s well-drawn leads, keeping readers on a knife’s edge as the full scope of each character’s history clicks into place. “
—Publisher’s Weekly
“The Dredge probes the conventional American myth: the past can be reformed and even suppressed so that one can turn a new page in the American Eden and become a new Adam or Eve. The intense story dramatizes how the past always shapes and determines the main characters’ quotidian existence and mental activities. An ambitious, splendid debut.”
—Ha Jin, National Book Award winning author of Waiting
“The story—which recalls simpler, less supervised times and contrasts them with the complexities of modern life—is bolstered by characters who are distant yet distinctive, and whose roiling inner lives weaken their outer ones. If The Dredge is an indication of things to come, Flaherty is an author to keep both eyes on.”
—John Valeri, Criminal Element
“How these well-drawn traumatized characters and their secrets collide in the present day, permanently changing the course of their lives, is the theme of Flaherty’s beautifully written debut. His Connecticut is not the monied suburbia of Rick Moody and John Cheever, but a rural working-class community more reminiscent of Daniel Woodrell’s Ozark mountain towns. . . This sad novel about the corrosive effects of family trauma and pain will linger in readers’ minds.”
—Willy Williams, firstCLUE
“It's clear that Brendan Flaherty is not here to f*ck around. With his debut novel, The Dredge, he catapults us right away into dark family dysfunction with tight, athletic prose reminiscent of seasoned masters like Elmore Leonard and Harry Crews. This novel could’ve been twice as long, but this author knew to stick to the plan with not a wasted word. So, remember the name, Flaherty, folks. He’s here to stay.”
—Brian Panowich, international best-selling author of Bull Mountain and Nothing But The Bones
“Deep in characterization and entertaining in its narrative; it makes a very philosophical point about how well we are aware of those we consider ourselves close to and how time changes them.”
—Toni V. Sweeney, New York Journal of Books
“The writing is tight and intense. The characters are vulnerable, impulsive, and scarred. And the plot, using a back-and-forth style, intertwines and unravels seamlessly into an engrossing tale full of lies, deception, abuse, desperation, manipulation, familial drama, troubled pasts, unusual friendships, troubling behaviours, violence, and murder… Overall, The Dredge is a dark, atmospheric, promising debut by Flaherty that kept me enthralled from the very first page and left me entertained, satisfied, and eager to read whatever his deliciously sinister mind manages to come up with next.”
—WBTB Book reviews
“Flaherty's debut is a tightly written suspenseful character-driven novel that feels like Southern noir despite taking place mainly in Connecticut. At only 240 pages, it comes in well below average length, but this is due to the clarity of the writing rather than a lack of detail. Without superfluous verbosity, the language recedes to the background as the characters come forward in vivid detail. The Dredge could easily be read in one sitting partly because of its length but also because the author immerses the reader in the small-town atmosphere at the same time that he introduces the background to the plot and develops the inter-related characters who are impacted by the eponymous dredge. Having accomplished all of this simultaneously, Flaherty's prose then adds layer after layer of depth to the plot… There is a great deal of depth in the story writing, and I think this would make an excellent book club book as it extends beyond the mystery aspects.”
—Sharon Mensing, Reviewing the Evidence

Connecticut’s 6th or 7th best writer since Mark Twain

About the Author

As a remote worker, Brendan Flaherty climbed the ranks of lower-middle management in some of the world’s tallest corporations. He is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and the Boston University MFA program, where he taught fiction. His debut novel, The Dredge, was published by Grove Atlantic in 2024. Middleman is his second book. He grew up in Connecticut’s Farmington River Valley, where lives now with his family.

Upcoming Events

Friday, November 13

House of Books,
Kent, CT
6pm

Saturday, November 14

Simsbury Public Library,
Simsbury, CT
4-5pm, after-party Soma Grille

Sunday, November 15

Hickory Stick Bookshop,
Washington Depot, CT
2pm