High Life Kindle Edition

One of the most brutal Los Angeles crime novels ever written. Hollywood. The City of Dreams at the end of the nineties. Jack has one ambition – to get famous. He doesn’t care how. He just wants to be like the people he sees in tabloid magazines and on TV: Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Tom and Nicole, Arnie, Bruce, Sly.... But the desire for fame has a dark side and he finds himself in a world of drugs and crime, whores, snuff shows, incest, deceit and despair. When his wife is found dead – murdered and disemboweled – and the search for her killer leads him to the femme fatale of all femmes fatales, he sees a chance to make his dreams of money and fame come true. But the City of Dreams can also be the City of Nightmares and it’s going to be a long, dark ride before Jack wakes up. “Stokoe’s in-your-face prose and raw, unnerving scenes give way to a skillfully plotted tale that will keep readers glued to the page...” Publisher’s Weekly “One of the most unstinting, imaginative, brutal, and original contemporary novels ever written about the punishments that come with the prioritization of fame...” Dennis Cooper “High Life is perhaps the greatest neglected masterpiece of true noir. I’ve never read anything like it before or since.” “Chandler on heroin, Hammet on crack, James M. Cain with a blowtorch...” Ken Bruen "Stokoe proves himself a worthy heir to the great tradition of California noir. Brutal and unflinching in its depiction of violence and sex, his book is like an unholy hybrid of Raymond Chandler's best work and Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho." Henry Flesh "All of the classic ingredients of Californian noir are here, but Stokoe takes things further than most . . . The plot is skillfully worked, the elements of crime writing are not jettisoned in the mounting horrors that he describes. There's also a certain grim humor on display, at times it is impossible not to laugh, even when Stokoe is making us wallow in filth. One can't help but feel that he's enjoying himself immensely . . . This is a compelling and gripping novel." --Black Star Reviews "Matthew Stokoe's brutal novel High Life explores the lengths one man will go to for a shot at stardom, and to say those lengths are extreme would be an understatement. From Raymond Chandler to Nathanael West to James Ellroy, the "dark underbelly of L.A." novel has always been an exercise in one-upmanship, to see who can create the starkest contrast between the surface of Hollywood glitz and the sheer depravity that lies beneath it. Stokoe's protagonist is Jack, a fully confirmed acolyte of the Hollywood Dream whose holy writ are the print and video tabloids . . . [T]he novel never strays far from its central purpose, to force the reader to consider the price he or she might pay for the ultimate prize. As we watch the various threads of Jack's life come together in a truly devastating series of events that raise the stakes ever higher, the question of how much hell any of us would endure for the promise of heaven is as poignant here as it is in anything by Dante." --PopMatters "High Life shows an author of awesome ability . . ." --Barcelona Review Read more