Pain Killers

James Ellroy

Dig it: Perv—A Love Story is a beautifully wrought and twisted ode to freaks, beatniks, hopheads, and the wild-assed and strange everywhere. Jerry Stahl is the American hipster bard.

Tom Franklin

"From the opening gut punch this book had me laughing and turning pages. Jerry Stahl is Thomas Berger’s wicked stepson and his new novel is a tour de force."

Publishers Weekly

The last place Manny Rupert wants to go is prison. But when the opportunity arises to investigate an inmate's claim to be Nazi war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele, it's too much for the ex-cop-turned-PI-last seen in 2002's Plainclothes Dead -to pass up. Masquerading as a drug counselor-despite his own addictions-Manny meets the nonagenarian who calls himself Mengele and hears firsthand of the torturous experiments the "Angel of Death" conducted at Auschwitz. Add to the mix the reappearance of Manny's ex-wife, Tina, whom he sees cavorting in the conjugal trailer with the prison's resident Jewish skinhead. It turns out that Tina not only works for an Internet Christian escort service secretly run by one of the prisoners but is also in league with the same man who hired Manny to spy on Mengele. Lines soon blur between justified revenge and outright cruelty, and it's up to Manny to keep everything straight or die trying. Stahl is no stranger to smashing social taboos, and his trademark blend of ballsy, blacker-than-black humor and wry social commentary lets him find humor in the Third Reich. (Mar.)

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Kirkus Reviews

Manic private eye Manny Rupert (Plainclothes Naked, 2001) darts across a fetid landscape after the infamous Dr. Mengele, who may be alive and well in San Quentin. In the opening scene, Harry Zell breaks into Rupert's house, cold cocks him (pretty impressive for a 72-year-old with a walker), then revives him to make a pitch. Zell says a San Quentin inmate claims he's Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who performed horrifying experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. He offers Rupert ten grand to see if the old geezer really is Mengele. Threatened with foreclosure, the ex-drug addict with two ex-wives takes the gig. He'll pose as a drug-rehab therapist and observe Mengele in group sessions. What follows may not be everyone's cup of bilge water, as Stahl (Love Without, 2007, etc.) lays out-and lays on-the execrable details of life in the Big House. Soon after Rupert checks in, he spots second ex-wife Tina having a conjugal visit with a prisoner. Tina, who finished off her first husband by lacing his Lucky Charms with broken glass and Drano, confides that she's also onsite at Zell's behest, leaving Rupert to ponder Zell's motives for uncovering Mengele. Does he want the Nazi killed in revenge? Or do American pharmaceutical companies, who may have used Mengele's methods to experiment on detainees in Abu Ghraib, want to silence the Doctor of Death? In wild sessions with a demented crew of would-be ex-addicts, Rupert hears the cagey man who may be Mengele suggest that he might be experimenting on humans at San Quentin. The final solution is at once pedestrian and profound. Stahl fires off great, if rude, one-liners while raising disturbing questions. But he lets the inmates hijack the narrative untilthe tiresome ranting on all sides upstages the case. Los Angeles and New York regional author appearances