Body, Mind & Health - Fiction, Politics & Social Issues - Fiction, Thrillers, Crime Fiction

Sick City

Name: Sick City
Author: Tony O'Neill
ISBN: 9780061789748

by Tony O'Neill

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Overview

Meet Jeffrey and Randal, two desperate junkies and your guides on this top-to-bottom fun-house tour of Hollywood's underbelly. From infamous crime scenes to celebrity treatment centers, Sick City is an outrageous page-turning adventure set in the sun-bleached wilds of LA.

Synopsis

Meet Jeffrey and Randal, two desperate junkies and your guides on this top-to-bottom fun-house tour of Hollywood's underbelly. From infamous crime scenes to celebrity treatment centers, Sick City is an outrageous page-turning adventure set in the sun-bleached wilds of LA.

Publishers Weekly

O'Neill (Down and Out on Murder Mile) delivers a Hollywood thriller that's equal parts acerbic social commentary à la Burroughs's Naked Lunch and extraordinary crime fiction misadventure featuring a druggie misfit named Jeffrey. After the sudden death of Jeffrey's "sugar daddy" lover, a retired L.A. cop, he's left with only a suitcase full of drugs, cash, and a "truly historic piece of celluloid," Sharon Tate's "last performance" in a private sex tape that includes an orgy with a laundry list of Hollywood stars. Jeffrey and a speed freak he met in rehab with connections to the movie industry come up with a half-baked plan to sell the homemade film, which could be worth millions, and gain some kind of salvation with the money. But with shadowy pasts, raging addictions, and a murderous psycho hot on their tails, the unlikely duo finds staying sober--and alive--increasingly difficult. Fans of Chuck Palahniuk and Warren Ellis will cherish this twisted tale and its repellent and disturbing imagery. (Aug.)

About the Author, Tony O'Neill

Tony O'Neill is the author of Digging the Vein and Down and Out on Murder Mile, and the coauthor of Neon Angel and the New York Times bestseller Hero of the Underground. He lives in New York with his wife and daughter.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

<i>Booklist</i>

“Like a Robert Altman film scripted by Charles Bukowski and William S. Burroughs...Sick City is appealing in its unsentimentalism, disgusting in its details--and, almost unbelievably, funny.”

Slash

"Sick City is a disturbingly twisted ride through Hollywood’s underbelly with a degenerate cast of colorfully interwoven characters. I loved the whole f**ked up journey."

Booklist

"Like a Robert Altman film scripted by Charles Bukowski and William S. Burroughs...Sick City is appealing in its unsentimentalism, disgusting in its details—and, almost unbelievably, funny."

<i>Willamette Week</i>

“A wildly fun read.”

CurledUp.com

"You may feel disturbed by this very realistic account of addicts on a mission."

Bookreporter.com

"What Sick City does is takes the grit and grime of, say, Naked Lunch by William Burroughs and makes it coherent…within the context of a caper novel, as imagined by Elmore Leonard….Sick City makes Jim Thompson’s novels look like Little Golden Books."

The Rumpus.net

"Like the bastard child of Dashiell Hammett and Evelyn Waugh....With Sick City, Tony O’Neil confirms his comic voice....If dark humor, punk sensibility, literary sophistication and pointed satire are among your addictions, you should find Sick City a rewarding read."

Willamette Week

"A wildly fun read."

Arthur Nersesian

"Addictive Noir! Rarely do you find a novel that is both fast paced and well observed, action packed, yet high-grade poetic. Once you start it, just try putting it down."

James Frey

"Sick City is fun, twisted and brutal. One of the best books written about LA in a long time. O’Neill could be our generation’s Jim Thompson."

Barry Gifford

"Tony O’Neill works his L.A. people the way Dutch Leonard had his hand down the pants of every degenerate in his great Detroit novels. Cover your ears, ladies; thanks to O’Neill, the cries of pain can be heard from one sick city to another. Just use your eyes."

Sebastian Horsley

"Reading Tony O’Neill is like traveling downhill in a car with no lights at terrific speed and driven by a four-year-old child on meth. The signposts along the way are all marked ‘Nowhere.’"

Tom McCarthy

"I f**king loved it — the piss-soaked floors, the vomit-impastoed car interiors, the groans and grunts from every room. It’s like some weirdly loveable purgatory."

Dan Fante

"Tony O’Neill writes about the Hollywood I know as well as any writer alive. His characters are a punch in the face, scorchingly real. His dialogue is note-perfect."