Book picks similar to
High Life by Matthew Stokoe
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Gun, With Occasional Music
Jonathan Lethem - 1994
Near-future Oakland is a brave new world where evolved animals are members of society, the police monitor citizens by their karma levels, and mind-numbing drugs such as Forgettol and Acceptol are all the rage.Metcalf has been shadowing Celeste, the wife of an affluent doctor. Perhaps he's falling a little in love with her at the same time. When the doctor turns up dead, our amiable investigator finds himself caught in a crossfire between the boys from the Inquisitor's Office and gangsters who operate out of the back room of a bar called the Fickle Muse.Mixing elements of sci-fi, noir, and mystery, this clever first novel from the author of Motherless Brooklyn is a wry, funny, and satiric look at all that the future may hold.
The Crow Girl
Erik Axl Sund - 2016
When two more bodies are found, it becomes clear that she is hunting a serial killer.With her career on the line, she turns to psychotherapist Sofia Zetterlund. Together, they uncover a chain of shocking events that began decades ago – but will it lead them to the murderer before someone else dies?
Cherry
Nico Walker - 2018
A young man is just a college freshman when he meets Emily. They share a passion for Edward Albee and ecstasy and fall hard and fast in love. But soon Emily has to move home to Elba, New York, and he flunks out of school and joins the army. Desperate to keep their relationship alive, they marry before he ships out to Iraq. But as an army medic, he is unprepared for the grisly reality that awaits him. His fellow soldiers smoke; they huff computer duster; they take painkillers; they watch porn. And many of them die. He and Emily try to make their long-distance marriage work, but when he returns from Iraq, his PTSD is profound, and the drugs on the street have changed. The opioid crisis is beginning to swallow up the Midwest. Soon he is hooked on heroin, and so is Emily. They attempt a normal life, but with their money drying up, he turns to the one thing he thinks he could be really good at – robbing banks.Hammered out on a prison typewriter, Cherry marks the arrival of a raw, bleakly hilarious, and surprisingly poignant voice straight from the dark heart of America.
Mygale
Thierry Jonquet - 1984
He has an operating theatre in the basement of his chateau and keeps his partner Eve imprisoned in her bedroom, a room he has equipped with an intercom and 300-watt speakers through which he bellows orders. Eve is only allowed out to be paraded at cocktail parties and on the last Sunday of each month, when the couple visit a young woman in a mental asylum. Following these outings, Lafargue humiliates Eve by forcing her to perform lewd sexual acts with strangers while he watches through a one-way mirror. In alternating chapters, Jonquet introduces seemingly unrelated characters - a criminal on the run after murdering a policeman, and an abducted young man who finds himself chained naked in a dark chamber, forced to endure all manner of physical torture at the hands of a mysterious stranger, whom he calls 'Mygale', after a type of tropical spider. All of these characters are caught in a deceitful web, doomed to meet their fate.
A Firing Offense
George Pelecanos - 1992
Blow-out sales and shady deals are his life. When a stockroom boy hooked on speed metal and the fast life disappears, Nick has to help find him.
Bad Men
John Connolly - 2003
The dead ones. They were dead, but they had lights. Why do the dead need light?Three hundred years ago, the settlers on the small Maine island of Sanctuary were betrayed to their enemies and slaughtered. Since then, the island has known peace. Until now. A gang of four men are descending on Sanctuary, intent on committing a brutal and relentless massacre. All that stands in their way are rookie police officer Sharon Macie and the strange, troubled officer Joe Dupree.But Joe is no ordinary policeman. He knows the island has been steeped in blood once and that it will never again tolerate the shedding of innocent blood. The band of killers who are set to desecrate Sanctuary will unleash the fury of its ghosts upon themselves and all who stand by them. On Sanctuary, all hell is about to break loose ...
The Ruined Map
Kōbō Abe - 1967
With The Ruined Map, he crafted a mesmerizing literary crime novel that combines the narrative suspense of Chandler with the psychological depth of Dostoevsky.Mr. Nemuro, a respected salesman, disappeared over half a year ago, but only now does his alluring yet alcoholic wife hire a private eye. The nameless detective has but two clues: a photo and a matchbook. With these he embarks upon an ever more puzzling pursuit that leads him into the depths of Tokyo’s dangerous underworld, where he begins to lose the boundaries of his own identity. Surreal, fast-paced, and hauntingly dreamlike, Abe’s masterly novel delves into the unknowable mysteries of the human mind.Translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders.
Layer Cake
J.J. Connolly - 2000
The worst thing about drug dealing—according to our unnamed narrator—whether you're a classy top dealer trading millions or a down-and-out street pusher, is that you have to relate to a lot of total idiots - loudmouths and tough-guy wannabes who aren't afraid to "get nicked by old bill and thrown in the boob" (arrested by police and jailed). Our narrator is a smoothly diplomatic 29-year-old cocaine dealer who has earned a respected place among England's Mafia elite. Speaking in a language rich with drug jargon, vulgarities, British slang, and Cockneyisms, he manages high-level trafficking with a tough old veteran partner, Mister Mortimer, a man who gave the narrator his start in the business, and who has seen his share of prison (five and a half year term) and deadly fights (he owns a porn store, and loves to set up guys looking for child porn by directing them to come back at a special time, then beating the living daylights out of them when they return). Our narrator’s goal is to retire at 30 and spend his remaining years far from the danger and double-dealing of London's crime gangs. But like most high rollers, he finds it hard to walk away from "just one more" deal.Morty rings up our narrator one early Saturday morning with an invitation to an exclusive members only restaurant far off in the English countryside. They’re off for “a spot of luncheon” with the Don, Jimmy Price. Jimmy is a legend, a crime boss who’s been in the business for years by hiring the best lawyers and keeping a low-key profile. This is a man who is always gets what he wants, and is not used to people refusing him favors. Which is exactly the spot our narrator soon finds himself in when over lunch, Jimmy hands down a tough assignment: find Charlotte Ryder, the missing rich princess daughter of Jimmy's old pal Edward, a powerful construction business player and gossip papers socialite. It’s a hard deal to refuse, but Jimmy can spot the edge on our narrator and makes him a deal – if you find Charlotte, you can leave the life for good.Our narrator sets out to find Billy Bogus, a grifter with a gift for mimicry and ingratiating himself into any area of society he wants. Bank and credit card fraud is his trade, with a healthy dollop of hustling young women out of their trust funds for good measure. On his way to meet Bogus, he runs into a small time punk named Sid in a local nightclub who runs with a band of thugs called “the Yahoos.” With him is a stunning woman, a “real love-a-player type” named Tammy. Sid tells our narrator a bloody story about a friend of his named “The Duke” who recently got ambushed by a state of the art crew armed with laser sighted Uzis. Our narrator won’t figure out the significance of this story until later as he’s too busy checking out Tammy, who flirtatiously gives him her number while Sid is distracted.Our narrator reports to Jimmy’s right hand man, Gene, that he’s on the case, but Gene has other business. Turns out that the Yahoos have two million pounds' worth of Grade A ecstasy to sell, and Gene wants our narrator to handle the deal. It’s an irresistible deal, just the right amount of money to top off his retirement fund. He sets up a meeting with him, Mort, and the Yahoos kingpins, Big Frankie and JD while finally catching up with Billy Bogus, who agrees to help find our narrator Charlotte by tracking down Charlotte’s boyfriend Kinky—for a price, of course.Big Frankie and JD keep quiet about where they’ve gotten the tablets, but the “gear” is top quality, confirmed by none other than Sir Alex (“chief chemical taster”). Things are looking up when Mort sets up his gang to meet up with a crew, headed by a man named Trevor, up in Northern England who he thinks will be perfect to unload the goods on. There’s only one problem – they don’t want the goods. This crew informs our narrator that an Ecstasy factory has been hijacked—most likely by the Yahoos—and now a brutal neo-Nazi sect wants those pills back. They’ve already hit up a house that belongs to “the Duke”, and here is where Sid’s story from the club all makes sense.Our narrator drives back to London with Mort in tow and gets a call from Bogus, who tells him he’s found Kinky. Dead. In a London housing project. It looks like a typical drug overdose, but a young kid drug dealer who helped Bogus find Kinky says he was murdered.Meanwhile, our narrator sets up a rendezvous with Tammy in a hotel room. As he steps out of the shower, two toughs ambush him, who roll him up in a carpet, and abduct him in a long box. The toughs take him to a construction site to meet with their boss, Eddie Ryder, Charlotte’s father. Eddie tells our narrator that Jimmy Price has pulled a fast one on him – his daughter’s isn’t missinnnnnng. What’s worse, Jimmy’s made a deal with some renegade Chechens that have swindled him to the tune of thirteen million pounds. To pull himself out of the hole, he set up the narrator to find Eddie’s daughter, then hold her for ransom. The double cross, though, turns into a triple cross when Eddie plays our narrator a tape that reveals Jimmy Price is an informer for the police and has set up a sting for our narrator where he plans to send him to jail for long time, and make off with the narrator’s retirement fund.Finding himself undercut, double-crossed, hung out to dry, and struggling to survive, our narrator’s survival instincts kick in. He changes from a turn-the-other-cheek diplomat to a revenge-charged hit man overnight, starting by killing Jimmy Price. Next, he agrees to sell the ecstasy tablets to Ryder, who plans to unload them to the Yakuza in Japan, which will put a nice chunk of change in our narrator’s pocket. Just before he leaves, our narrator mentions a bit of dirt that Jimmy gave him in passing about Eddie, insuring that Eddie won’t kill our narrator—just in case he gets any funny ideas about doing so.Suddenly, all of the narrator’s problems looked solved. Jimmy’s dead, and those two million tabs of ecstasy are headed to Japan. Then, Jimmy’s right hand man Gene asks for a meeting with Mort and our narrator. Gene accuses our narrator of killing Jimmy and threatens to kill him unless he confesses. Our narrator plays the tape Ryder gave him for Gene and Morty, revealing Jimmy’s double-dealings with the police. Gene lets our narrator go and agrees never to discuss the crime again.All that remains is the little matter of two million tabs of ecstasy. In a flourish of double and triple crosses, our narrator’s deal to exchange the tabs for cash at Heathrow Airport falls apart, but ends up with the tabs in Amsterdam. As he prepares to dash off to Amsterdam to collect the loot, he decides to give Tammy a call before he leaves. Unfortunately, Tammy’s jealous boyfriend Sidney tailed her, and shot the narrator three times, including twice in the head. The narrator lived, recovered in the hospital, and is ordered into retirement and exile by the cops. He rings Tammy to offer her one more chance to meet, but she tells him “girls like dangerous guys but you’re seriously fuckin’ life threatening. How many girls do you know end up covered in blood, chief prosecution witness in an attempted murder trial on their first date?” She wishes our narrator well, who has plenty of time to reflect on his life as an ex-pat in Curacao, Brazil. He acknowledges that, in life, you never stop learning, but you never stop forgetting either. He has plenty of time now to ruminate on both, living a life where he can remember why he left the business, but never forget why he can’t tell us his name.
Gods Without Men
Hari Kunzru - 2011
It is God without men.- Honoré de Balzac, Une passion dans le désert, 1830 Jaz and Lisa Matharu are plunged into a surreal public hell after their son, Raj, vanishes during a family vacation in the California desert. However, the Mojave is a place of strange power, and before Raj reappears inexplicably unharmed - but not unchanged - the fate of this young family will intersect with that of many others, echoing the stories of all those who have traveled before them. Driven by the energy and cunning of Coyote, the mythic, shapeshifting trickster, Gods Without Men is full of big ideas, but centered on flesh-and-blood characters who converge at an odd, remote town in the shadow of a rock formation called the Pinnacles. Viscerally gripping and intellectually engaging, it is, above all, a heartfelt exploration of the search for pattern and meaning in a chaotic universe.
The Enchanted
Rene Denfeld - 2014
Others don't see it, but I do.The enchanted place is an ancient stone prison, viewed through the eyes of a death row inmate who finds escape in his books and in re-imagining life around him, weaving a fantastical story of the people he observes and the world he inhabits. Fearful and reclusive, he senses what others cannot. Though bars confine him every minute of every day, he marries magical visions of golden horses running beneath the prison, heat flowing like molten metal from their backs, with the devastating violence of prison life.Two outsiders venture here: a fallen priest, and the Lady, an investigator who searches for buried information from prisoners' pasts that can save those soon-to-be-executed. Digging into the background of a killer named York, she uncovers wrenching truths that challenge familiar notions of victim and criminal, innocence and guilt, honour and corruption-ultimately revealing shocking secrets of her own.
The Killing Lessons
Saul Black - 2015
Two violent predators walk through the door. Nothing will ever be the same.When the two strangers turn up at Rowena Cooper's isolated Colorado farmhouse, she knows instantly that it's the end of everything. For the two haunted and driven men, on the other hand, it's just another stop on a long and bloody journey. And they still have many miles to go, and victims to sacrifice, before their work is done.For San Francisco homicide detective Valerie Hart, their trail of victims-women abducted, tortured and left with a seemingly random series of objects inside them-has brought her from obsession to the edge of physical and psychological destruction. And she's losing hope of making a breakthrough before that happens.But the murders at the Cooper farmhouse didn't quite go according to plan. There was a survivor, Rowena's ten-year-old daughter Nell, who now holds the key to the killings. Injured, half-frozen, terrified, Nell has only one place to go. And that place could be even more dangerous than what she's running from.In this extraordinary, pulse-pounding debut, Saul Black takes us deep into the mind of a psychopath, and into the troubled heart of the woman determined to stop him.
Revenge (aka The Stars’ Tennis Balls)
Stephen Fry - 2000
The only thing that can be guaranteed is that it will be his next earth-movingly funny bestseller. And we are still pretty confidently saying it will not be about earthworm migration patterns in East Devon.This is the story of Ned Maddenstone, a nice young man who is about to find out just what hell it is to be one of the stars' tennis balls. For Ned, 1978 seems a blissful year: handsome, popular, responsible and a fine cricketer, life is progressing smoothly for him, if not effortlessly. When he meets Portia Fendeman his personal jigsaw appears complete. What if her left-wing parents despise his Tory MP father? Doesn't that just make them star-crossed lovers? And surely, in the end, won't the Fendemans be won over by their happiness? But, of course, one person's happiness is another's jealous spite. And spite is about to change Ned's life forever. A promise made to a dying teacher and a vile trick played by fellow pupils rocket Ned from cricket captain to solitary confinement, from head boy to political prisoner. Twenty years later, Ned returns to London a very different man from the boy seized outside a Knightsbridge language college. A man implacably focused on revenge. Revenge is a dish he plans to savour and serve to those who conspired against him, and to those who forgot him.
The Girl Next Door
Jack Ketchum - 1989
Shady, tree-lined streets, well-tended lawns and cozy homes. A nice, quiet place to grow up. Unless you are teenage Meg or her crippled sister, Susan. On a dead-end street, in the dark, damp basement of the Chandler house, Meg and Susan are left captive to the savage whims and rages of a distant aunt who is rapidly descending into madness. It is a madness that infects all three of her sons and finally the entire neighborhood. Only one troubled boy stands hesitantly between Meg and Susan and their cruel, torturous deaths. A boy with a very adult decision to make.
A Terrible Beauty
Graham Masterton - 2003
Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire is used to bloodshed, but this ivory litter of human remains is unimaginable butchery."Of other worlds apart from this..."In isolated darkness not far away, an American tourist is at the mercy of a serial killer. His tools are a boning knife, twine, and a doll fashioned from nails and fishhooks. The murder of his victims is second only to the pleasure of their pain."Darker places inhabited by evil monstrosities..."As an eighty-year-old mystery unfolds, so does a modern-day ritual that's marked Katie Maguire as its next victim. For what happened once in this small picturesque village is happening again. It's more than a series of horrifying crimes. It's tradition."Take me there."
Fludd
Hilary Mantel - 1989
He is the curate sent by the bishop to assist Father Angwin-or is he? In the most unlikely of places, a superstitious town that understands little of romance or sentimentality, where bad blood between neighbors is ancient and impenetrable, miracles begin to bloom. No matter how copiously Father Angwin drinks while he confesses his broken faith, the level of the bottle does not drop. Although Fludd does not appear to be eating, the food on his plate disappears. Fludd becomes lover, gravedigger, and savior, transforming his dull office into a golden regency of decision, unashamed sensation, and unprecedented action. Knitting together the miraculous and the mundane, the dreadful and the ludicrous, Fludd is a tale of alchemy and transformation told with astonishing art, insight, humor, and wit.