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JOHN RIDLEY |
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edgy, and caustically funny. |
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Love is a Racket In his first novel since Stray Dogs, John Ridley offers up a brilliant noir farce about a small-time con man who finally gets it right just before it all goes wrong. Everything's a racket for Jeffty Kittridge, a thirty-seven-year-old ex-wannabe scriptwriter living on the skids in Hollywood--the two-bit cons he pulls for spending money; the way he convinces himself that he's not a drunk between every shot of booze he kicks back; the way he tries to assure Dumas, the local shark, that he's about to pay off his 15K debt... Except he's not good at any of that. He's been in jail twice (and the state's got a bad attitude about seeing someone the third time); that bug he just felt crawling up his neck is most likely the first installment of the DTs; and Dumas recently delivered a fairly emphatic payment-due reminder. |
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Everybody Smokes in Hell
John Ridley is back with a brutally funny, outrageous new novel that chronicles the mayhem unleashed by the stumblings of one hapless young man trying to make it in Hollywood. Paris Scott can't make anything work out. A failed actor, writer, musician -- a failure, period -- he works nights at a convenience store, drives a '76 Gremlin, and was just kicked to the curb by his best girl. But when the last master tape of a freshly suicided rock star and a small fortune in stolen drugs fall into his lap, it's like he's stumbled onto the key to his dreams. He might as well have stumbled onto a time bomb. The people who want the stolen dope back get themselves viciously confused with the people who want the stolen tape, but no one is confused about Paris's being the bull's-eye of the target they're gunning for. So how's a guy who's wanted dead stay alive? "Get out of town, get some money, then get more out of town." Paris puts his Gremlin in gear, and the resulting chase and chain-reaction madness stretches from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, leaving a trail of blood, bodies, and broken hearts in its wake. Dope dealers, Hollywood agents, two-bit criminals, three-bit criminals, waitresses, psychopaths, rock stars, strippers, beautiful women, not-so-beautiful women, and desert rednecks -- no one comes out clean in this raucous romp-and-stomp. It's John Ridley at his most devilishly sly, laying out proof that, without a doubt, everybody smokes in hell. |
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