Customer Reviews

Down and Out on Murder Mile: A Novel (P.S.)

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With DOWN AND OUT ON MURDER MILE, Tony O'Neill doesn't romanticize the junkie life; he proves instead that it's everyone else who romanticizes the sober life. And yet for all of its outsider coolness, it is not as preachy as the drug narratives of the 1990's about its anti-materialism. The speaker's lyricism trumps any attempts to condemn him as whiny. Instead he seems desperately aware and even sensitive within a world where narcissism and ignorance are so rampant it is perfectly normal for them to go unironically unnoticed.

LA serves as ground zero for the explosively grotesque addiction. The thunderous militarism of America's attitude toward drugs blackens every street and secrets every high. When the narrator is whisked with his junkie wife to London, there is a brief sigh of relief. But London proves to have its own secret daggers. Life in London becomes like trading in your old lover for one who promises to beat your body instead of your face so it won't show as much.

The voice here is simultaneously youthful and eternal. It has captured what the beats captured in the 1950's not by going off on be-bop and jazz or even new jazz. It instead rejuvenates their spirit by portraying an international exchange of subculture and colorful adolescence that would make William Gibson jealous.

It evokes the spirit of Burroughs with due respect and even passion. But really it is better than Burroughs because it's easier to read and has girls.

And so, while O'Neill ultimately agrees with Aubrey DeGrey that "life is a terminal illness", one must read this book to understand the light and intricate web of ideas that thwart simple solutions to problems like addiction. Because in the end, survival itself is no solution or purpose. But beauty, shared, smashed, bleeding or otherwise, has every right to exist.

A very talented book by a talented writer. Anyone who has been addicted to something, or tried to kick their addiction should be able to relate to the story. Captures the partying and drug taking culture really well. Reads like an admixture of Burroughs, and Hunter S. Thompson.

I reviewed this book at 3AM Magazine
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/walking-the-wild-side/

Mike Covey,
editor, Lit Up Magazine

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