God is a Bullet by Boston Teran

“During Christmas week in 1995, a fourteen-year-old girl is kidnapped by a bloodthirsty satanic cult that calls itself the Left-Handed Path. Bob Hightower, the girl’s father and a small-town copy, embarks on a desperate mission to find his daughter but his only hope lies with Case Hardin, an ex-cult member and ex-junkie living in a halfway house in Hollywood.
“Their quest – his for his child, hers to exorcise demons from the past – becomes a primal hunt-and-chase through a savage subculture of drugs and ritualistic violence. But it is Bob who holds the final card to throw into the macabre ‘game’…the twentieth enigma of the Tarot…the angel who signals Judgement…”

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE is book in a major way…my favourite passage:

“See,” she continues, “I believe everybody knows what life really is about. Only they are just not ready for what they would call ‘bad news’. They fight against it with God and the devil and all that holographic New Age bullshit. Yeah, I believe everybody knows there is nothing. Everybody knows down in their guts. It’s x number of years, then the ground and done, and it frightens them.
“I believe the human beast is desperate and saw fit to retro a god in its own image to conform to what it wants when it wants it. To what it needs when it needs it. To what it must have when it sees suit to have it. And worse yet, it was Michelangelo’s vision. You know…”
She stretches out her arm in a mock imitation of the God of the Sistine Chapel ceiling reaching out for Adam. “The big man,” she says. “Great White, as I like to call him. The shark of sharks.”
She shakes her head. “Yeah. White. And a man. You want my opinion, that was the original bullshit sin. ‘Cause it set a precedent. It said the godhead – perfection – was a male. Which the white culture turned into their own native son. So everyone and everything else was a step down. Women. Blacks. Indians. Animals. Gays.
“Shit, it’s Genesis. Which is just so much muckraking bullshit. So much moral and philosophical gerrymandering. It’s Hitler’s Mein Kamph, but a better mindfuck people can get into.
“Those who buy the faith ostracize those who don’t. And countries are built on the back of that faith. Civilizations on the back of those countries. The fuckin’ dollar bill, man – “In God We Trust” – what a fuckin’ wink.”
She flicks her ashes hard, and they rim the ashtray before dropping in. she takes one of the empty shot glasses and separates it from the others, letting it stand alone at the edge of the table.
“Then an outsider comes along,” she says. “And has a thought. Other outsiders buy into the idea. You know what it is. Cyrus. They create a devil in their own image and likeness. Their patron saint. And the war starts. And why not? Why should the outsiders lie down and die at the feet of the bullshit holy? You and Cyrus…” She slaps her arm where the needle would go. “You need each other. Like junk. ‘Cause neither side can see it all for what it is without their fix.
“Everyone needs a club. Club God and Club Scream. On the same block. With different bands. But the riffs are begged, borrowed, and bullshit. And the cover charge is too much, no matter what. You want the real truth, Coyote, go knocking on coffins.”
She points her cigarette at him. “And you want the real reason why you’re breaking apart? To believe in your God is to believe in him. Cyrus. To believe in him is to believe in the power of it all. And I don’t just mean what he did. I mean the implications around what you feel like. Being the rat’s ass in the Great White’s eyes. To believe in that is to believe in the reason for things to be what they are, and since that reason is beyond your grasp, you pray for your baby’s death. The end of suffering. The end of some failure in the Great White’s eyes.”
She holds up the cigarette, lets it burn some. “But whose suffering, Coyote, hers…or yours?”
….yadda, yadda, yadda…
“Of course, there is one loose cannon running around that could pass itself off as the real thing.” She looks around, reaches under the table and into her shirt. Bob watches her arm fiddle a bit, then come up with a closed hand. She opens it clandestinely. In the palm is a Frontier cartridge – a good old gliding metal jacket with brass bullet for better, deeper penetration.
“Take a look. This is the ultimate life form, the highest art form. The great equalizer. It crosses all political, social, and religious lines. It has no ties. It plays no favorites. It cuts both ways. It is as simple and profound as any fuckin’ parable the Bible could slop up through all that magisterial garbage. It carries history on its back. All life falls before it. All faith resides within that virgin brass casing. The virgin birth, baby.
“Yeah. It births new religions and bears down on old ones. There’s god, Coyote. Grin and bear it.” She slips it into his hand.