Everybody Smokes in Hell - Softcover

Hollywood and her tramp sisters fame and fortune were nothing but a bunch of whore seducers. With a wink and a smile and a wiggle of the ass, they shanghaied you over to some dark corner where their brother, the twin goons despair and defeat, waited to come at you with all the pleasantries of a back-alley abortion.

John Ridley welcomes you back to his Los Angeles--a place soaked in the grime of seedy corruption and all manner of venality. He obviously despises the place "more than cancer" yet he displays an uncanny knack in wringing one he ll of a sleazy tale from it's dream-shattering streets. Akin to theanti- heros in Stray Dogs and Love Is A Racket, Paris Scott, a convenience store clerk, stumbles on a supposedly "can't lose" plan. When Paris finds a man slumped on the hood of his rust-friendly AMC Gremlin, Paris drives the stranger to his Bel Air mansion, where he is suddenly identified as Ian Jarmaine, Rock Superstar and soon-to-be-suicide victim. After being called a loser, Paris exacts revenge by stealing the master tape of Jarmaine's farewell album. Unfortunately, it ends up sharing the same hiding place with a large amount of heroin that his roommate stole from the local dealer. Now, a Hollywood agent, a drug dealer and a nymphomaniac assassin are hot on his trail from LA to Las Vegas, creating a mad chain reaction that leaves a pungent trail of bodies, blood and broken hearts. Not only does Ridley write with vivid and passionate description but, in the space of three novels, he has become the foremost purveyor of riotously black humour (Jarmaine's suicide is a frankly hilarious and a tragic reality to his romanticised ideal). This book is raucously non-PC and revels in its identity as a hedonistic road trip. Keep hating LA, John, the results are so enjoyable. --Danny Graydon

Paris Scott works nights at a convenience store and drives a '74 Gremlin. Recently dumped by his girl, he's what you'd call a loser. Even when the key to his dreams - the last master tape of a very famous, and recently deceased, rock star - falls into his lap (together with a small fortune in stolen drugs which he doesn't know he has), Paris might as well be cradling a neutron bomb. As the people who want the tape get dangerously confused with the people who want the dope, the ensuing madness stretches from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, leaving a trail of blood, bodies and broken hearts in the rear-view mirror.

From the acclaimed author of Love is a Racket, this savage black comedy chronicles the mayhem unleashed by one hapless young man trying, none too successfully, to make it in Hollywood. And no-one comes out clean in this raucous romp-and-stomp of a novel - proof, if ever it were needed, that everybody smokes in hell...