The Invisible Worm That Flies in the Night
(2026)(The second book in the Twisted series)
A novel by James Dain
Winner, L.A. Neo Noir Festival – Best Novel
In a working steel town in western Pennsylvania in the early 1960s, a stranger arrives looking for a second chance.
Tony Pagano is a man on the run, determined to leave behind a past he barely understands and cannot control. Taken in by Father Vinton, an earnest young priest who believes in redemption, Pagano finds uneasy refuge on the margins of a tight-knit working-class community.
At the same time, eleven-year-old Francis Mozek is searching for his missing father, trying to make sense of a world already fractured by abandonment and confusion. Drawn to Pagano’s attention, the boy finds in him something he has been missing—understanding, protection, even affection.
Others are also drawn in. Francis’s mother, lonely and vulnerable, offers Pagano a place to stay, while Officer Bob Grybowski, a hard, watchful cop, begins to suspect that the newcomer is not whom he seems.
What unfolds is not sudden violence, but a slow and dangerous entanglement of need, secrecy, and self-deception, as each character moves—step by step—toward consequences they neither intend nor fully comprehend.
As the line between care and exploitation begins to erode, the cost of misplaced trust becomes irreversible.
Told with unflinching psychological clarity, The Invisible Worm that Flies in the Night is not a sensationalist story, but a serious examination of how predation takes root within ordinary lives—and how a community, in its blindness and longing, can become complicit in its spread.
Disturbing, morally complex, and deeply unsettling, this award-winning novel examines the nature of evil, the limits of redemption, and the devastating cost of looking away. A noir-inflected psychological thriller in the tradition of Daniel Woodrell and Cormac McCarthy.
For mature readers. Contains disturbing subject matter handled in a serious manner.
Genre: Mystery
In a working steel town in western Pennsylvania in the early 1960s, a stranger arrives looking for a second chance.
Tony Pagano is a man on the run, determined to leave behind a past he barely understands and cannot control. Taken in by Father Vinton, an earnest young priest who believes in redemption, Pagano finds uneasy refuge on the margins of a tight-knit working-class community.
At the same time, eleven-year-old Francis Mozek is searching for his missing father, trying to make sense of a world already fractured by abandonment and confusion. Drawn to Pagano’s attention, the boy finds in him something he has been missing—understanding, protection, even affection.
Others are also drawn in. Francis’s mother, lonely and vulnerable, offers Pagano a place to stay, while Officer Bob Grybowski, a hard, watchful cop, begins to suspect that the newcomer is not whom he seems.
What unfolds is not sudden violence, but a slow and dangerous entanglement of need, secrecy, and self-deception, as each character moves—step by step—toward consequences they neither intend nor fully comprehend.
As the line between care and exploitation begins to erode, the cost of misplaced trust becomes irreversible.
Told with unflinching psychological clarity, The Invisible Worm that Flies in the Night is not a sensationalist story, but a serious examination of how predation takes root within ordinary lives—and how a community, in its blindness and longing, can become complicit in its spread.
Disturbing, morally complex, and deeply unsettling, this award-winning novel examines the nature of evil, the limits of redemption, and the devastating cost of looking away. A noir-inflected psychological thriller in the tradition of Daniel Woodrell and Cormac McCarthy.
For mature readers. Contains disturbing subject matter handled in a serious manner.
Genre: Mystery