Amazon.com Review
After a bad night at the 24-hour market in Hollywood where he works, Paris Scott finds the Filthy White Guy who just bought a ton of frozen burritos with a hundred-dollar bill (and then destroyed the store's microwave), slumped half-conscious on Scott's rusty 1976 AMC Gremlin. "Paris wasn't a particularly good person," writes John Ridley, "and that was by his own figuring. It's not like he hung around soup kitchens doling out freebies, or gave a damn when dykes were outside Mayfair Market in WeHo collecting money for the AIDS Walk, but he was one of those 'There but for the grace of God' guys; one of those guys that thought if you went out of your way to ignore someone else's bad shit then that same bad shit was liable to boomerang around and smack you in the head at some point." So Paris gives the Filthy White Guy a lift home, and it turns out he's a famous rock star, who repays the favor by calling Paris a loser before passing out. Paris gets even by stealing a tape of the singer's proposed comeback album, an action that might get him killed if the folks who are after the stolen dope that Scott's roommate Buddy took get to him.
Ridley, who writes gritty, critically praised thrillers about Hollywood types who have traded in their dreams of stardom for the reality of survival (Love Is a Racket and Stray Dogs), hates Los Angeles "more than cancer" (as he says in a disclaimer). In Everybody Smokes in Hell, he describes the city with more poetry, passion, and mordant humor than anyone since Nathanael West in Day of the Locust. If you can tolerate the occasional outbursts of racism, sexism, and other non-PC activities, it's a journey worth making. --Dick Adler
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
With his clipped, jagged prose and darkly imaginative plots, Ridley has proven himself as one of the new chroniclers of the rot that some find festering beneath the glistering veneer of Los Angeles. Here, he's in good form, slashing out a black comedy that may be a little too disturbing for some tastes, but is nonetheless memorable. In Ridley's city of unattainable dreams, Paris Scott is its personification. He works the night shift at a scuzzy Hollywood mini-mart, drives a '74 Gremlin and was recently declared a loser by his ex-girlfriend. But Paris finally gets his break: he comes into possession of the last musical works of rocker Ian Jermaine, just before the star commits suicide. Paris tries to sell the tape for $1 million but quickly finds that several people would rather kill him for it. Also in Paris's possessionAunbeknownst to himAis a large quantity of cocaine that a different set of killers want back. After Paris clumsily dodges several murder attempts, he flees to that other city of tacky dreams, Las Vegas, where the mayhem continues. The narrative is peopled by all sorts of misfits and undesirablesAoily Hollywood agents and their insufferable sidekicks, ignorantly vicious drug dealers, tragically hopeful immigrants and a beautiful expert at torture who savors the driving beat of Bachman-Turner Overdrive while inflicting pain on her victims. There's a moral hereAthat there are no easy roads to success and fulfillmentAand Ridley (Stray Dogs; Love Is a Racket) gets around to that point after all the blood is spilled. His writing may ooze bitter disdain for L.A., but it's clear that the city fascinates him just as much as it repels him. Though his strong, conversational voice carries the story, one hopes that next time around he'll put his talent to work on a plot with more depth and substance.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
