Deviant Behavior: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, Fatherhood, and Crystal Skulls [Paperback]

Mike Sager (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2008

Jonathan Seede is the picture of Washington, DC, respectability, an urban pioneer with a pretty wife, a new baby, and a job at the town’s most esteemed newspaper. But ten blocks from the White House, on the notorious Fourteenth Street strip, a war is raging over deviant behavior. And Seede is on the front lines, deep into a secret freelance project that’s taking him to places where most people would never dare to go.

As he descends into an inferno of repressed urges and human frailties, Seede’s journey plays out against a brilliantly realized portrait of the nation’s capital, featuring pimps and hustlers, an accidental hooker, an honest cop, a storefront prophet/marijuana dealer, a beautiful teenage runaway, a crack-addicted music legend, an A-list gay activist, and a diminutive billionaire who is searching for the answers to life’s greatest questions in a crystal skull. The first novel from best-selling journalist Mike Sager,Deviant Behavioris a mad, vivid, and daring romp through a society in crisis, and the story of what happens when one frustrated father decides to Just Say Yes.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sager blends a magnified slice of urban subculture in late 1980s-early '90s Washington, D.C., with a subplot about powerful mystical artifacts. Washington Herald reporter, reluctant new father, urban pioneer and druggie Jonathan Seede is working on a book that subverts the Just Say No movement. Things hit a snag when his main source, the Pope of Pot, a do-gooder dealer who only sells primo pot, gets framed by dirty cops for dealing coke. One of the pope's possessions—a crystal skull rumored to have magical powers—ends up in the hands of a runaway who finds shelter in Seede's house. Other characters, like pimp Jamal Alfred and Salem, one of Jamal's girls with a shady past, contribute to the sleazy milieu and provide entrée to the wealthy Bert Metcalfe, who has designs on the crystal skull. Though the supernatural elements are unfortunately muted, Sager studs his dark D.C. tale with sharp observations and an addictive neo-noir sensibility. (Apr.)
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Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat (April 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080217048X
• ISBN-13: 978-0802170484
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,760,635 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mike Sager is a bestselling author and award-winning reporter. He's been called "the Beat poet of American journalism." For more than a dozen years he has worked as a Writer-at-Large for Esquire magazine.

Sager's career in journalism began in 1978, when he quit law school after three weeks to take a job on the graveyard shift as a copy boy at The Washington Post. Eleven months later, he was promoted to staff writer by Metro Editor Bob Woodward, of Watergate fame. Sager left the Post after six years to pursue a career in magazines. His first collection of articles, Scary Monsters and Super Freaks, published in 2003, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller, as was his second, Revenge of the Donut Boys, published in 2007. His first novel, Deviant Behavior, was published by Grove/Atlantic's Black Cat in April, 2008. A third collection, Wounded Warriors, was published in October, 2008 and received the Military Writers Society of America Founder's Award and the American Author's Association Golden Quill Award.

A former Contributing Editor of Rolling Stone and Writer-at-Large for GQ, Sager has also written for Vibe, Spy, Interview, Playboy, Washingtonian, and Regardies. He is also Editor-at-Large for WordsETC, the first black-owned literary magazine of South Africa.

For his stories, Sager has lived with a crack gang in Los Angeles; ex-pat Vietnam veterans in Thailand; a 625 pound man in El Monte,CA; teenage pitbull fighters in the Philadelphia barrio; Palestinians in the Gaza Strip; heroin addicts on the Lower East Side; Aryan Nations troopers in Idaho; U.S. Marines at Camp Pendleton; Tupperware saleswomen in suburban Maryland; high school boys in Orange County. Eight of his articles have been optioned for or have inspired Hollywood films.

Sager has read, lectured and held workshops at the schools of journalism at Columbia University, NYU, the University of Illinois, the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Missouri, and in various other forums; his work is included in textbooks presently in use in college classrooms.

Fifty-three years old, Sager is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Emory University, and a former intern at the pioneering Atlanta alt-weekly Creative Loafing. He lives with his wife and son in San Diego, California. He is a past recipient of La Jolla Youth Soccer's "Competitive Manager of the Year" award.

He is at work on a second novel. He can be reached though his website, www.MikeSager.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars What a Let Down, March 22, 2009

By 

C. Gendron "Calliope" (Maryland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Deviant Behavior: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, Fatherhood, and Crystal Skulls (Paperback)

I thought I would love this book, it takes place in DC (my hometown) & it's loaded with funny, interesting, horrible, & likable characters. Truth be told, I did like it, BUT the ending left me hanging. It just abruptly ended, I have no idea what happen. Seems like the author just gave up. Sager tries to bring it together with an epilogue, but it feels like an after thought.