Totally Killer: A Novel [Paperback]

Greg Olear (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 2009

Conspiracy and pop culture collide in 1991 New York in this dark debut from Greg Olear.

Taylor Schmidt—twenty-three, single, and jobless—arrives in the Big Apple desperate for work and hungry for love. Through the Quid Pro Quo Employment Agency she finds the perfect job and the perfect boyfriend . . . but perfection has its price.

Part thriller, part satire, part period piece, Totally Killer is a total page-turner.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“I totally loved Totally Killer. It’s American Psycho meets I Love the ’90s. It’s The Firm with an ironic, sexy twist. Flawless writing, funny, sweet, and thrilling, Totally Killer is a fast moving page-turner that had me hooked from the first page.” (Colleen Curran, author of Whores on the Hill )

“Greg Olear stands out as one of the few ‘New Voices’ in contemporary fiction whose writing actually deserves the moniker. The title doesn’t lie—Totally Killer truly is.” (Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight )

“Olear has created a veritable almanac of the 90s. Totally Killer is, well, totally killer. You’ll laugh. You’ll cringe. You’ll weep. You may even find yourself humming Whitney Houston.” (Jonathan Evison, author of All About Lulu )

“Lock Ted Bundy, Franz Kafka, and Terry Southern in a room with a typewriter and they might produce something like Totally Killer...This darkly comic, beautifully written tale of conspiracy, sex and obsession in 1990s New York City deserves a wide audience.” (Bruce DeSilva, Edgar-nominated author of Rogue Island )

“… this wacky tale of capitalist aspirations run way beyond amok…[is] a dark, hilarious, and original fable, well worth reading.” (Chronogram (Hudson Valley) )

“Smart, unexpected, and wonderfully savage in its humor. Totally Killer nails, without mercy, the mood and minutiae of a weary America at the end of the 20th century. Olear’s characters are perfectly emblematic of their times.” (Brad Listi, author of Attention. Deficit. Disorder. )

About the Author

Greg Olear is the senior editor of the lit blog The Nervous Breakdown and the author of the novel Totally Killer. His work has appeared in therumpus.net, Babble.com, themillions.com, Chronogram, and Hudson Valley Magazine. A professor of creative writing at Manhattanville College, he lives with his family in New Paltz, New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; First Edition edition (September 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061735299
• ISBN-13: 978-0061735295
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,270,087 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

GREG OLEAR, a creative writing professor at Manhattanville College, is the author of the novel TOTALLY KILLER (Harper, 2009), now available in French (Éditions Gallmeister).

His second novel, FATHERMUCKER (Harper, 2011), concerns a day in the life of a stay-at-home dad; he describes it as "Ulysses by way of Us Weekly."

He is the senior editor of The Nervous Breakdown and the founding editor of Fathermucker: The Blog (fathermucker.com).

Please follow him on Twitter (@gregolear), friend him on Facebook, add him to your innermost Google + circle, visit his website (the cleverly-URLed gregolear.com), and, if it's not too much trouble, compose a Miltonic sonnet in his honor.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars sex! violence!, October 3, 2009

By 

Ris (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Totally Killer: A Novel (Paperback)

Sex! Violence!! C'mon, who doesn't dig on that? At least in their pop-entertainment. Read this book on the recommendation of a friend & wasn't disappointed. Kept me up late racing to the finish line. Totally Killer is a fun and warped journey back in time - summer of 1991. I was just in high school back then, but this book evokes that era with smart, funny and spot-on commentary, stuffed with pop culture references and plenty of eerie parallels to 2009. Go out and buy this book today - make sure that you can boast of having the edition with the original cover (which is also like, totally killer) when the inevitable movie tie-in comes out with Scarlett Johansson sporting a denim mini skirt and .44 caliber on the front. And did I mention: Violence! Sex!!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good stuff, October 2, 2009

By 

L. Richards (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Totally Killer: A Novel (Paperback)

This book is a really fun read. Sex, murder, conspiracies, black comedy, and New York in the early 1990s. Told from the perspective of today, the story straddles both eras really well - the two settings being the end of the two Bush eras make for a lot of interesting parallels. For those of us who remember what the world was like before internet, before the neo-tech era, it's a trip down memory lane with all the awkwardness of the time. For those readers who don't have that experience, the book captures just what the times were like. Olear has a gift for the analogy, and it's great to see someone present the world of the early 90s so well with a mixture of fondness and poison. I think it's the first book I've read that really presents the that era as it was. Except for the thriller element. Nothing in my life at that time was as exciting....

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Late-Night Page Turner, October 18, 2009

By 

documentrix (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Totally Killer: A Novel (Paperback)

I'm an overeducated escapist reader. TK suits me perfectly, as it's a fun, smart book.

I read a LOT. I'm always looking for new stuff, and sadly, good stuff is hard to come by. Especially if you're looking for a thriller that's above the Grisham lowest-common-denominator style of writing.

Here's an exception.

GO brings a lovingly snarky eye to the 90s in a fast-paced, sexy thriller that makes for a hell of a read. I totally remember being a young professional in 90s NYC, and he's captured that time - and that desperation - and the East Village dailiness (RIP Dojo) - perfectly.

This is one of those books that's bound to have the movie rights snapped up for a summer thriller. Read it now so you can picture the characters on their own, and not how Hollywood will probably show them to you in a couple of years. The characters are memorable and deserve to be learned on their own terms first.

My only regret is that the book was published too late to bring to the beach. Because it is a PERFECT beach read. But whatever - it's also a good subway read, vacation read, or late-night-marathon read (which is what I did).

Spend some time with TK. You won't be sorry.